Milngavie Early Years Centre

Here is one of our wee three year olds who has just written her own name and drawn a fabulous picture of herself, complete with belly button.  At nursery, children’s drawings usually develop from scribbles, into heads with arms and legs and then into recognisable figures complete with bodies, arms, legs, eyes, nose, mouth, hair etc etc.  This wee person is aware of all these things already – maybe she is going to be an artist.

This week in nursery we are looking at planting and growing and all things Springlike!  Maureen is creating a “What we know about Spring” wall in the creativity zone and all of us will be planting our own sunflower seed and hopefully watching it start to grow over the next few weeks.

Monday is the last session with Danny the SFA football coach.

Tuesday is gym day for Blue. Orange and half of the green group in the morning and in the afternoon, we are having a visit from Jason, who is going to do a “Going for Gold” gym lesson with the afternoon children.

Friday is red nose day – we are going to wear red and do lots of funny things – it will be great fun!!

On Thursday Angela continued the work she had been doing with the children on potions with an amazing new ingredient.  Dry Ice!!  Mr Hargreaves, one of our past parents, who is a university scientist very kindly brought us a thermos flask with dry ice pellets!  Angela showed the children how it looked- it was white and it had mist coming from it.  We were not allowed to touch it because it was so cold that it would have burned our skin.  Angela picked it up with a spoon and put some into a jug of water – immediately it began to bubble and the top of the jug filled with a foggy mist.  Angela explained we were seeing the ice melting and turning back into a gas called Carbon Dioxide.  We tried adding some food colouring to the water – it really looked like a magic potion now!

The gas stayed white and it looked quite creepy.  Next Angela put some washing up liquid into our potion.  The mixture frothed up with big bubbles, which, when you popped them were full of gas which all puffed out when the bubbles burst.  It looked really magical.  Angela told us that what we were seeing was a chemical reaction.  We think science is magic!!

We had a think about what we would like to do with potions next week.  Oliver said he wanted to make one which would make him invisible.  Many people wanted potions to make them into real princesses. Lots of the children wanted to re-do the experiment we did last week with bicarbonate of soda and vinegar which erupted like a volcano!   Angela is planning some very controlled explosions using shaving foam and popping candy- we can’t wait.

In the afternoon it was Kate’s turn to don the goggles and be the scientist- everything worked really well and the children loved the experience.  Thanks Angela, for planning really imaginative activities which really extended the children’s learning, captured their imaginations and  and introduced the magical nature of science.

We walked up to the orchard gate past the fence where honeysuckle are starting to grow.

We looked at the strawberry patch that we had planted last week.

Some of our wee plants had been dug up by animals but lots of them were green and healthy!

We looked at the labels on the trees to see what kind they were and who had planted them.

There were plum, pear, and apple trees! Lots and lots!

We have lots of raspberry canes, blueberry, blackcurrant, red currant and blaeberry bushes. They are all beginning to grow!

We looked carefully a the Toad Hall wildlife woodpile to see if there were any toads or newts at home – but we didn’t see any!

Rosie did find a snail shell though!

We saw lots of plants like budleja and heather – planted to attract butterflies and bees.

“It’s going to be really nice!” said Lauren.  “I want to pick all the strawberries!” said Rosie.

All of us liked the idea of being able to pick our own fruit to eat and being able to watch birds and butterflies and bees in our orchard this summer.

A date for the diary -Our big Orchard Opening Day is 20th May – during the School’s Spring Fayre.  We are going to have a scavenger hunt for the children and a family barbeque at night to celebrate!

Everyone is very welcome to come!

There was lots of excitement today out in the garden – frogs were spotted jumping about in the soil near the pond.  One of the mummy frogs was carrying a daddy frog on her back!  Elisabeth lifted them and put them into the pond – the mummy frog looked relieved – carrying the dad must be hard work.  2 more frogs turned up during the morning and were “helped” into the pond.  We really enjoyed watching them swim about. We think we might have some frogs spawn soon!

It was a grim day – drizzly and wet and not much fun to play outside in.  We decided to have a walk to Milngavie library along the West Highland Way.  Although it was wet, we enjoyed our walk and saw lots of spring flowers on the way. The rain had made the Allander Burn very full, and we watched the water rushing down under the bridge.  We were happy to arrive at the library, if only to get out of the rain – it was quite busy and we knew that we had to be very quiet.  We all sat down and Kate read two stories – The Last Chocolate Chip Cookie which had a great recipe for cookies at the end, and a cautionary tale about having a messy room, called Jumblebum – which made us all feel like going home and tidying our rooms!

This week in nursery we are going to be outside, looking at what is going on in the natural world – they garden and orchard are really beginning to come back to life, and Lynn, who is our outdoors person just now, has planned planting and designing a pulley to help us lift the compost up to the top level of the garden.

We are continuing to explore our Winnie the Witch books – they have an amazingly diverse range of topics from Space, to the Seaside, to Seasons etc, so there is still lots to look at.  Our words of the week are: Scrumptious, Adventure, Unpack , Space and Picnic.

SFA Football Coaching on Monday.

Gym on Tuesday – Red, Yellow and half the green group.

Friday is Music Day – Susan will be here with her Fabulous Snappy Sounds!

Looking forward to a great week- Spring is definitely in the air!

This morning there was great excitement in nursery – we were expecting a special visitor.  We had to go over to the school gym to meet him, because nursery was too small for him to get in!!  Primary 1 came too.  Kevin, Barney’s handler was really funny – he kept getting everyone’s names wrong.  He put cones down so Barney would know where to go, and he got out a big timer so we would know when Barney would be coming in.  Eden had to turn the timer over and the excitement began to build.  At last Barney came in – Aaron brought him in on a big chain.  He was massive!  It turned out that Barney was quite a naughty dinosaur and didn’t always do what Kevin told him.  Kevin had to feed Barney because he was hungry and he tried to give him a bit of brocoli.  Barney didn’t like it – he just spat it out.  Kevin gave him some sausages and he tried to eat Kevin’s arm as well.  After the sausages he was still hungry and Kevin looked for helpers to give him a chicken.  The chicken squawked every time the children touched it and Kevin had to give him it himself – again Barney had a go at his arm!

Then Barney played games with the helpers.  At the end we had a roaring competition – we were definitely winning but Barney went in a huff so we let him win!  What an exciting morning.  Aaron’s mum Jan came along to make sure Barney behaved himself.  Thank you Jan for a great experience!

Here are some photos of the morning!

On our way for a dinosaur adventure.

Milngavie Primary PTA is looking for new members, as quite a few are due to retire after their 3 year stint.  The PTA is a very important part of Milngavie Primary and its work allows the school to offer much more than just the normal curriculum.  It really makes our school a very special place.

In Nursery, we are very grateful to the PTA for our music sessions with Susan, Enjoyaball sessions and SFA football.  They raise an amazing amount of money by organising Spring and Christmas Fayres, Ceilidhs and lots of other fun events which bring parents together and make our school a friendly place to be.

Being on the PTA is a really worthwhile job – it helps your own child and also benefits the whole school community.  You become part of the heart of our school and it is a great way to meet other parents.

If you are interested, please contact Morag McLeod on the Milngavie PTA Facebook page or speak to Kate, who can put you in touch with her.

Today Susan brought a really lovely musical experience to our nursery, finishing off our Julia Donaldson month with a real flourish. She discovered music written by Rene Aubry which was written as a musical sound track to Julia Donaldson’s well known story – Room on the Broom.  She started by asking the children what they knew about the book and many had a good knowledge- Anna knew all the animals in the story and Zach told Susan they turned into a “Mud Monster”.  She played the music as she read the story and it really added another dimension to the story.  The dragon music was really quite scary!

Susan asked what kind of broomstick we would have to make to carry all of us at once – “It would have to be humoungous!”  said Zach.  “You’d need to make it out of metal, to be strong enough!” said Drew.

We really enjoyed our trip on the broom – Susan made it really special!!