Milngavie Early Years Centre

On Wednesday the 13th and 20th of September, Chris Allen from Enjoy-A-Ball will be coming along to our gym sessions to give all our children two free taster sessions.

Our first 2 weeks are free and then Enjoy-A-Ball will be asking for £2.00 per half hour session per child.  This is a reduction on the normal cost of Enjoy-A-Ball.  Chris will be sending out details of how to sign up, and outlining the many benefits Enjoy-A-Ball.  Our children have really enjoyed the experience in previous years and we are really looking forward to seeing Chris on Wednesday.

Happy Monday everyone!  At present it’s not raining and there is even a glimpse of sun.  Fingers and toes crossed for a dry day!  This week in nursery we are going to talk about the new season with the children and find out what they know already, and what we might learn about Autumn.  We are going on an Early Autumn walk on Friday and will be looking for signs that summer is over and Autumn is nearly here.

On Monday the Red, Yellow and Green groups are learning some new colours in Spanish with Judit.

This week Angela and Maureen will be preparing a group of pre-school children for their first Forest Kindergarten outing next week.  They will practice the safety games and talk about rules and everyone will make their special Forest Badge.  The children have been chosen by lucky dip – all our pre-school children will have a chance to try our wild outdoor learning at some point during the year.  If you would like to know more about it, please feel free to speak to Angela or Maureen.  The children who are going next week will get a letter and leaflet giving full information.

Wednesday is gym day for all groups!

On Friday we are taking the children for a look at the local woods to see if there are any signs of autumn- we’ll take our cameras and record what we see.

We have got a brand new, very loud, shed alarm for the new playhouse courtesy of Katie Risk- thanks Katie.  We are going to look at our wee house this week and ask the children what we should have in it and how we should use it.  We just need to learn how to switch our alarm on and off now – be ready for some false alarms in the garden!!

This Friday, Mr Snappy and Susan visited nursery for some more musical investigations.  Inside Mr Snappy’s back pack today was a piece of paper with 3 notes on it and a big number 3.  What could it mean?  Susan helped us by getting us to count to three – one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three – it gave us quite a different rhythm to last week’s marching to number 4 .  We thought it sounded a bit like a musical triangle.  We played maracas and Susan’s special egg shakers and soon got the hang of the beat.  Susan told us this rhythm was called a Waltz.  It was especially good for dancing to, so we all got a teddy as a partner from Susan, and we all danced together.  Susan played us The Second Waltz by Shostakovich.   It was really good fun and the music  made us want to whirl round in circles.  Dancing is always a good way to end a week in Nursery!

This week in nursery our learning focus at home base time has been measuring and length.  We have been learning words associated with length and using lots of different things to measure with.  On Friday we arranged ourselves from biggest to smallest in our groups and also made a human chain to see if we could stretch right through the hall -from the discovery zone to the creativity zone.  We made a great video of this but it is unfortunately too long to upload!!! 

On a rainy Friday morning these handsome boys brought a wee ray of sunshine into nursery.  Max and his big brother Jack, optimistically expecting sunshine and looking very cool indeed! 

This year our school is taking part in the Rag Bag Recycling Scheme, developed to raise awareness of textile recycling.  By taking part, we help the environment, help our council meet recycling targets and also raise funds for our school.

If you would like to help, bags will be available in the Nursery hall, to take home and fill with used clothing.  They will be collected from school on Wednesday 13th September and taken to the Rag Bag factory where they will be sorted and graded for re-use or recycling.

Please feel free to take as many bags as you like.

One of our lovely former pupils, Wallace Dinning, came back to nursery last week with a very special present for the Nursery children – a fabulous small world play Fire Station.  Not only do the firemen in Wallace’s Fire Station have a shiny pole to slide down, they have a helicopter and helipad, a gym with a treadmill, bunk beds to sleep in and even a fire engine!

It has very quickly become the favourite toy in the whole nursery – everyone loves it!! It was really kind of Wallace to give it to us- thank you Wallace!

Hola!  It’s Monday again and Judit is visiting nursery to work with the Orange and Blue morning groups.  They will be learning the Spanish words for Red- Rojo – pronounced Roho, Blue- Azul – pronounced Athool and Green – Verde – pronounced Berdey. We are also learning Gracias and Adios.    Judit is going to make a lovely Spanish rainbow for our Spanish wall with all the colours in Spanish.

Wednesday is our gym day this year.  This week the Red, Green and Yellow am groups are going.  Next week it will be the turn of the Blue and Orange groups.  All groups will go on a Wednesday afternoon.

Susan is coming in on Friday and we will be doing a bit more musical investigating.  I wonder what Mr Snappy will have for us this week?

At homebase time we are investigating the vocabulary of length and looking at different ways of measuring.  Over the week we are all going to measure our height-we’ll see how much we grow over the next 8 months!

On Saturday night 5 of our lovely staff team – Angela, Julie, Eileen, Lynn and Maureen- donned their tutus and went for a 5K walk at midnight in aid of The St Margaret’s Hospice, Clydebank.  Angela has set up a just giving page in case anyone wants to donate.  The Hospice is a very special place – both my mum and Angela’s mum spent time there at the end of their lives and the loving care they give patients and their families is absolutely wonderful.

The Milngavie Maddies – all ready to walk 5K for St Margaret’s Hospice.

Not content with wearing the tutus – Angela and Maureen have also signed up for the Pretty Mudder sponsored event for Cancer Research on the 16th September – expect more crazy photos!!

Pam had a very attentive large audience for her story – The Day Louis got Eaten by John Fardell.  This story book belongs to Pam’s wee boy and she brought it in as her favourite book.  It was so good we are going to try to get the book for Nursery.