Milngavie Early Years Centre

If you would like to order the Christmas cards that your child made in nursery, please return the form by Wednesday.  Thank you!

We are looking forward to 4 fun packed days in Nursery this week, ending with a staff inservice day on Friday, when nursery will be closed.  Next week is the October Week holiday and nursery opens again on Monday 23rd October.

This morning we are going to Cairns Church with the school for the Harvest Service.  Judit is also coming in to teach us some more Spanish words.  FABULOSO!

Tuesday is Forest Kindergarten day and Maureen, Angela, Kate and Lynn will be taking to the woods with 2 groups of children.  Fingers crossed for a lovely autumn day!

This week we are asking the children to draw a line drawing of themselves at homebase time.  It is always lovely to see how children’s drawings progress while they are at nursery as their motor skills develop.  A line drawing is a wee snapshot in time.  These will go in the learning journals so you can see them too!

If anyone is having any difficulty accessing their child’s learning journal, please speak to Kate and we will get it sorted out.  The feedback so far has been really positive – many thanks for this.

On Friday all our staff are attending an inservice at Lenzie Meadow Primary School in the morning.  In the afternoon we are working on making our nursery a Communication Friendly area for all children.  This involves making resources more accessible with increased labelling and more child friendly, pictorial signs for children around the building.

Happy Holidays for next week!!

The Monday morning group are going to the Harvest Festival Service at Cairns Church with the school on Monday at 9.15am.  We are making a collection of tins and packets for harvest baskets so please feel very free to donate.  We will put our basket out on the table tomorrow and on Monday morning. The donations will go to homeless charities in Glasgow.

We put everyone’s learning journal on line yesterday.  If you have not received an email about how to access your child’s journal, please see Valerie or Kate.  We must apologise if they are not perfect – it has been a steep learning curve for us and we know we have made some mistakes which we have not yet been able to delete.  Hopefully, you will be able to see past minor imperfections and get a feel for how the journals will work.  There are spaces for parents to comment too, and we are excited that we have a real chance to share what the children are learning in nursery, much more immediately with you.

 This handsome boy came to nursery wearing a new shirt in his very favourite colour on Friday.  On the front it says -“Hands up if you like Fridays!”

Funnily enough this was the response:

You can’t see any of the ladies but they all had their hands up too!

Good morning – can’t quite believe it’s Monday again.  Gale force winds to start the week – we are hoping that it calms down for our forest kindergarten outings tomorrow.  Lynn is on a course on outdoor play today- I hope, for her sake, its happening inside!

Tomorrow our morning forest kindergarten group are hopefully taking to the woods for more wild fun.  Lynn and I are going to take a group of afternoon preschoolers to look at the part of the woods we will be going to and pm forest kindergarten will be starting next week.

On Wednesday, Chris will be coming for Enjoy-A-Ball.

On Friday we have Susan visiting Nursery with Mr Snappy to help us investigate some more music and rhythm.

Many thanks to Judit, Suzy and Sheena for coming along to the Parents Focus Group on Thursday.  We discussed the blog and the difficulty some people have, receiving updates.  I will attempt to remedy this, this week.

We also talked about sharing Parenting strategies and research, through putting interesting links on the nursery.  Nursery staff are currently reading Suzanne Zeedyk’s theories on attachment.  Her book ‘Sabre Tooth Tigers & Teddy Bears- the connected baby guide to attachment’ is a really interesting read and talks about the effect of parenting on a child’s ability to cope in later life.  It has great implications for us, as Early Years practitioners and I really like her approach.

We use Triple P strategies in nursery too, to encourage positive behaviour and set clear boundaries.  There are always Triple P parenting courses running in East Dunbartonshire, and these are free for parents who live in our authority area.  If you are interested in signing up for Triple P please talk to Valerie, our Family Champion.

This week we welcome two Primary teaching students from Strathclyde University – Diane Beveridge and Scott Petty.  They will be with us till 13th October.  We hope they will enjoy their time with us!

Diane and Scot

Good morning – I hope you have had a great long weekend!  We have 4 fun packed days of nursery this week.  This morning we are going out to explore the autumn garden and orchard.  Today our wee group of intrepid forest kindergartners are off to Barloch moor for more wild adventure with Maureen, Angela,  Mhairi and Catriona. Lynn is going along this morning too, in training for starting forest kindergarten with Kate and a group of pm children next week.

TOMORROW- WEDNESDAY- IS PHOTOGRAPH DAY!!  Individual photos will be taken of all our nursery children.

On Thursday morning between 9.10 and 9.40am we are holding a Parents Focus Group.  We are hoping that you might come along and give us some guidance on things we can work on this year to improve our service.  We can promise you a cup of coffee or tea and maybe even a biscuit if you come along.  We really value parents opinions and would be very grateful for your input.  If you can’t come along but have some ideas, please either email me – KCameron@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk, or fill in a paper slip in the hall.  Many thanks for your help!

We are going to learn some new autumn songs this week and look at birds that migrate and animals that prepare to hibernate at this time of year.

The weather stayed fine for our afternoon walk too- we had a really nice time exploring and looking for signs of autumn.  We took pictures as we went to remind us what we had seen.  We found a clearing and practised some of the games they play in the forest kindergarten sessions.  This included sticky feet, sticky noses and  (not as inappropriate as it sounds) sticky bums.  We also learned what to do if a dog we don’t know comes up to us – we crossed our arms and sang, “Who let the dogs out!” This was a particular favourite and some of us sang it all the way home!

Can’t believe it’s Monday morning again!  Today we are having a wee departure from routine and Susan is coming in with Mr Snappy for some musical investigations.   We are also having our Spanish session with Judit!  On Tuesday a group of children are off to the moors for a forest kindergarten experience with Maureen and Angela.  Afternoon sessions for pre-school children will start next week with Kate and Lynn.  Wednesday sees our next free session of Enjoy-A-Ball with Chris.  Details of how to sign up for future sessions will be available on Wednesday.  Thursday is our Tidy day this week as we have a four day week due to the September Weekend.  We are closed on Friday and on Monday of next week!  Our homebase time activity this week is a bit out of season – Christmas Cards!!! The PTA have asked every child to make a Christmas Card to be made into printed card so we are going all Christmassy all week.

A wee reminder that next Wednesday is photo day – individual photos will be taken of all our children.  Please can you tell anyone you know who doesn’t read the blog.  I’ll put it on the nursery board too!

Thanks to everyone who came along to the gardening day yesterday.  It was fab – Katie made the most delicious soup and baking and we all got stuck in.  Our wee playhouse is now fully alarmed, so if the vandals think of breaking in they’ll get a very loud surprise!  Pam and her husband Alan, with help from Shaun- got the boat settled on a bank of tyres and we are going to get either several tons of shingle, or bark to create our beach effect and bed it down.  It’s going to be a fabulous space for imaginative play!  Looking forward to my first voyage and hoisting the pirate flag!

A date for the diary!  A wee heads up that our individual nursery photos are being taken on Wednesday 27th September.   We will remind you nearer the time too!