Milngavie Early Years Centre

This week we have been doing lots of counting and looking at numbers.  It has been great fun!   We have had numbers in the water and sand, on puzzles, computer games and at the writing area.  Here are photos of some of the activities we have used to keep the children interested.  We have been encouraging accurate counting by organising the items to be counted carefully, and touching each of the things as we count.  Our number recognition is also coming on.  We are working on number recognition of 1-5 with our ante-pre-schoolers and 1-10 with our pre-school children.  If you would like any maths games or puzzles to use at home with your child, please speak to staff.  Thank you for all the feedback on the learning journals.  From this, we have learned that many of our children are beginning to enjoy writing their names so next week we are focusing on pencil control and for those who show interest, copying words too.

Apologies for the extremely short notice- the hyacinth competition is being judged TODAY! If your hyacinth bulb is flowering please bring it in to nursery! Mine unfortunately flowered and died last week- fingers crossed yours is alive and well!! Good luck!!!

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend Milngavie Primary School’s Burns Competition.  It is the first time I have ever attended and I was a bit apprehensive as I’d been asked to help judge.

It was amazing – it was introduced by an incredible piper – Craig Munro- who has played with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers and who played bagpipes on the Disney film, Brave.  He played us in and then told us a bit about the bagpipes and how Scottish he feels when he plays.  He encouraged us all to take up playing the pipes and the show of hands, when he asked who might be interested, was almost unanimous.

The standard of the Burns performers from every class was exceptional – the children had obviously spent a lot of time and energy rehearsing their poems and practising their performing skills.  Everyone was so good, it was really hard to choose a winner from each class.  If I had been able to really choose, they would all have been winners.  The upper school Burns poems were very long and it took an amazing memory to recite them, never mind perform them effectively to an audience.  I was genuinely amazed at the standard of performance.

It also struck me that the ethos of the school was shining through, in the confidence of the children.  To perform in front of the whole school and lots of adults with such aplomb is an incredibly difficult thing to do.  The children had been encouraged by their teachers and families and showed no nerves.  The school audience was very receptive – even the wee ones listened intently to every performance and clapped enthusiastically.  Each class was rooting for their class mates as they performed.  It was lovely to watch.  When the winners were announced the runners up dealt with the disappointment of not being first, admirably.  Even the wee tiny P1’s were resilient. Watching all the children who have been through our nursery and are now so self-assured and grown up made me feel quite emotional.

The music on the day, provided by our very own school musicians was also lovely and the P7’s sang a lovely version of “Walking on the Waves”, which would have brought tears to a glass eye.

I had a really lovely morning and thoroughly enjoyed it all- it made me very proud of my Scottish heritage and of our wonderful school. Thank you so much to everyone who made it a really special competition and experience.

Today we went for a walk to see Milngavie’s oldest house – The Corby Ha’- which is now home to the Milngavie Pipe Band.  We didn’t hear any bagpipes today, but we did see the house and heard how the people would have lived in one half and their farm animals would have lived in the other half.  We thought about all the jobs the children would have had to do on the farm in the olden days – collecting water from the stream, gathering sticks for the fire and cleaning out the animals’ poo from the byre.  We decided we were glad we weren’t born in the olden days!!  We then walked down to Gavin’s mill and looked at the old building.  It is really, really old and it is the reason that Milngavie has it’s name.  We saw all the wheels from the machinery that worked the mill and then we went round the side of the mill to see the great big mill wheel that was turned by water power to work the mill.  The Allander burn was really fast today with lots of water flowing down it and we could imagine how fast the wheel might turn.  We went up onto the bridge and played pooh-sticks, watching them rush off down the very fast river.  We went home by the Salmon ladder and watched, and heard, the water rushing down the waterfalls.  We saw lots of things on our walk that were really interesting – we are glad we live in Milngavie.

There was drama in the house corner this morning when one of the babies developed chicken-pox.  Rosie rushed to find the phone to call the doctor but we didn’t have a mobile!!!  We were wondering if anyone has an old mobile lurking in a drawer that they could part with in the cause of education!

Maureen is also looking for watches, clocks and stopwatches as we are looking at timing our laps outside and becoming aware of the units of time and what the numbers mean.

All donations will be very gratefully received!

The weeks just seem to fly past – can’t quite believe its Monday already!  This morning in nursery Judit is coming in to have some fun with Spanish.  We are also having our SFA football coaching session .

On Tuesday we are going to go for a walk to look at a couple of Milngavie’s oldest buildings – the Corby Ha’ and Gavin’s Mill.  The Corby Ha’ has the same layout as Burn’s Cottage which we looked at last week and is around the same age.  Gavin’s Mill is the building from which Milngavie takes its name – we will be having a wander round the back to look at how the mill worked and see the ruins of the big water wheel which drove it.

Our group time this week is going to be spent investigating number.  We are encouraging lots of counting of objects and teaching the children to touch each the objects to make sure we count them accurately.  We are also looking at number recognition.

I have had the honour of being asked to help judge the school Burns competition and am heading up to Cairns Church for the big event this morning.

Today we had a visit from Marion Cairns from the Forestry Commission, who run the Forest Kindergarten Course.  She brought along some trainee Forest School Leaders, who were doing the same course as Maureen and Lynn.  They came to the woods to watch Angela, Kate and Kirsten and our wee Forest School group.  It was very wet and the children all had fun despite the terrible weather – it was funny to be outnumbered by adults!

Marion also brought a new resource with her, which she asked us to trial in our nursery.  It’s a Forest Family bag which contains some fun things.  We have been asked to lend it to families who might enjoy trying out a few forest kindergarten activities at the weekend or after nursery.  All we ask is that you comment on how you found using it, and suggest anything else that it might be good to put in it.

If you would like to borrow it, please speak to staff and we will ensure you have a turn.  It looks as if it could be great fun!

Our Forest Family Bag

The bag contains lots of good ideas for things to do in the woods and fun resources to use.

Good morning – it’s Monday again and we are ready for another fun packed week!  This week we are learning about Scotland.  We’ll be looking at maps, listening to music, learning a dance, learning about some Scottish traditions and maybe even having a wee Highland Games- weather permitting of course.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Maureen and Lynn are on a Forestry Commission Course to learn more about Forest Kindergarten.  On Tuesday Angela, Kate and Kirsten are taking a wee group to Barloch Moor for a Forest Kindergarten Session and the Forestry Commission are bringing a group of trainees to see what we get up to.

On Wednesday we are having a visit from the trainers from Going For Gold.  They are going to give us a very special gym lesson and give our staff lots of tips for planning exciting gym lessons in the future.

Thursday is a special day in Nursery too.  We are celebrating our national bard’s birthday  with a Burns Day Zoolab visit – a mix of poems and animals.  There is a cost of £3 per child for this – we are hoping it will be a really special and memorable Burns Day.

At group time this week we are going to be learning a wee Scots poem, doing a bit of dancing – our own version of the Eightsome Reel, and singing some Scots songs.

We saw a sign which told us we were getting near the duck pond!

Today we went out for a walk to see how the snow is changing our local landscape.  It was quite slippy , and we had to help each other over the ice on the pavements.  The duck pond looked very cold.  We happened to have a little bread in our pockets (we know that we should have had frozen peas and other veg) and we fed it to the ducks and swans.  The sea gulls saw this and joined in – they were very greedy!  We saw red berries on some bushes and we talked about how hard it is birds to find food in the snow and ice.  Everything looks very pretty in the snow but it is a very difficult time for wild life.  It made us think about how we could help them-so watch this space to see what we come up with.

We all wrapped up warmly in our hats and coats!

We could see animal tracks in the snow.

We could see people’s footprints too!

Good morning.  We have another fun packed week planned with a focus on healthy eating.  We have had a McDonalds Drive-Thru in the playground last week, at the behest of the children and this has led to a discussion about how we eat to keep healthy. We have doubled our fruit order and are going for fruity  and vegetably snacks and are reading lots of stories about eating well and exercising.  I am hoping that this will have some kind of motivational effect on me too, though the chances, unlike myself, are quite slim!!!!

We are playing out in the garden all week, so please can you check your wee one has wellies in nursery.

We are also practising our counting and awareness of number with lots of fun activities outside and in, to boost our numeracy skills in a fun way.

Monday is SFA football training day and we will be visiting the gym for this.

Next week we have a Scottish week planned.  We will be learning Scots songs and rhymes and talking a lot about Scotland as a place and what makes us feel Scottish.  On Robert Burns’ Birthday – Thursday 25th January – we have booked a very special Burns Day visit from Zoo lab – a special experience with Burns poems and some of the animals Burns wrote poems about.  The cost for this event is £3 per child and due to space, is only open to children who normally attend on a Thursday.