Milngavie Early Years Centre

These buckets were put out in the playground, filled with balls for rolling down shutes and pipes.  These resourceful boys found that they made great seats – except you couldn’t climb back out very easily.  They also tried running around the playground with the buckets on their heads!  “You really can’t see anything at all!” said Leo, as he collided with a fence!

It is a very busy morning in our construction area.  It is one of our most popular areas in nursery.  This year we have some very able builders.  Maureen provided the children with some packing tape and they used this to keep their bricks together.  Murray decided that they were making a gaol to keep Maureen in.  Luckily, the big walls of the gaol, unfortunately, collapsed before she could be incarcerated, so beware – Maureen is free for another weekend of criminality. Only joking Maureen!!!!

Murray decided to build a gaol to keep our worst Nursery Staff Criminal, the fearsome Marauding Maureen away from society.

This morning Anna asked Valerie a really interesting question. She knew that cows give us milk, but she wondered “How do cows make milk?”

Quick as a flash, Valerie said “I’m not sure -Let’s just find out!” and googled a fabulous Countryfile program about cows.  They found out that cows have 3 stomachs and that they eat the grass, bring it up again, chew the cud and then it goes into another stomach.  We also found out that cows spend 14 hours a day sleeping and drink at least 5 litres of water a day.  Zach was also interested – while they were watching, there was a bit of noise round the computer and Zach said, “Shoosh – this is important!”

They watched with real concentration  for quite a while then decided maybe a wee look at other farm animals would be good.  Sheep being sheared and a rabbit farm were also viewed with interest.  Maybe a nursery trip to a farm park this year would be a good option?

Next week in Nursery we are holding a very special tea party.  Rosie’s mum, Katie Risk is bringing us lots of delicious home baking and organising coffees and teas, and our lovely children are going to be the waiters and waitresses, serving the cakes.

If you would like to come please buy a ticket and sign up for a reservation in our tea room.  To make sure each child can serve their mum, dad, gran, grandpa etc we need to timetable our helpers – so we need to know when you will be coming.

This tea party is Katie’s idea – she is on a real mission to raise money for a new play house for us.  She has already raised £395 with the amazing gin hamper she raffled at Christmas, and is hoping we can raise enough from our Tea Party to buy and build a new house to replace our vandalised one.  We are so grateful to her for doing this  – she is a wonderful baker and we know that the Tea Party is going to be a huge success.

If you cannot make it to the Tea Party but would like a carry out cake – please make a donation and we will send you one home!

Welcome back to nursery everyone!  We hope everyone is feeling good this morning after a lovely break!  Staff were back yesterday, catching up with lots of folders and paperwork so its a real relief to see the children today!  Kate and Valerie were on an East Dunbartonshire in-service course yesterday.  The keynote speaker was Deirdre Grogan from Strathclyde University – she gave a really interesting presentation on challenging children to think and explore their own learning.  We then attended workshops on Dialogue with Parents, Play in Primary 1 and using collections of interesting materials to stimulate imagination, problem solving and collaborative play.  It was a very worthwhile morning and we came back full of new ideas.

This week in Nursery we are talking about ourselves with our keyworker – our favourite things, our friends, our best presents ever!  We are putting these into a poem to put in our learning journey.  We will be investigating rhyming words.  We might even try “I Spy With My Little Eye something that rhymes with……….”, with all our wee clever clogs that can rhyme already.

Tomorrow Susan is bringing Mr Snappy and friends to Nursery for musical fun – songs, dances and playing instruments!!!

The mud kitchen was a busy place this afternoon.  There was a lot on the stove and plenty of mud, sand and water being turned into culinary delights – stew, macaroni cheese and spaghetti bolognese were the favourite recipes.  However, as the afternoon progressed and the mix became quite revolting and two of  the children were heard  muttering – “This looks like poo!”  We had to agree!!

Today was the perfect day to play out in our garden.  The children were really excited.  “It’s really like a jungle!”  said Drew.  It was cold and we even had the added magic of snow which some of us managed to catch on our tongues.  We climbed trees, we slid, we climbed the compost bin, we raced tyres, we played ice-cream shops in the patched-up play house, and we enjoyed looking in the pond and at all the different plants.  Zach discovered some amazing lichen growing on a tree and we had a discussion about poisonous plants.  Here are some photos of our afternoon squad enjoying the great outdoors!  We are so glad to have this amazing area back – thanks again to everyone who helped us make it safe.

Please could everyone be sure to check their child’s head.  It is really good to do this weekly as headlice love little children’s tender scalps!  If you are not sure what you are looking for there are lots of videos on You Tube which are guaranteed to leave you feeling a bit itchy and scratchy!  There is a good Youtube video which shows lots of natural alternative treatments including mayonnaise, vinegar and coconut oil which are all seemingly good for killing the little horrors!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmEe5E5IayU

We have put free fine tooth combs on the nursery noticeboard – please feel free to take one.  A trip to the pharmacy and a chat with the pharmacist will provide expert advice and  a recommendation of an appropriate treatment.

All the information sources on headlice and nits stress that it can take a while to get rid of them.  Extreme vigilance is needed as just one nit can reinfect a child’s scalp.  Keeping bed linen and cuddly toys regularly washed at a high temperature reduces the risk of reinfection too.

Unfortunately head lice are a very common problem throughout the world, and always have been. In nursery we are not allowed to check children’s heads.  If we see a wee one scratching, we will of course inform the parent and suggest they check. Please do not feel that we are in any way judgemental – headlice affect everyone, and love clean hair.  Staff check their heads regularly too.  The only way we can keep the bugs at bay is by raising awareness and encouraging everyone to:

TAKE A PEEK EVERY WEEK!

Thank you to everyone who very kindly donated boys clothing for our spare clothes boxes.  We are now all ready for any amount of accidents and spills!!

We have also been to ASDA and purchased 20 pairs of girls pants – this will hopefully put an end to us sending our girls home in superhero y-fronts!

If you have any boys t-shirts or sweatshirts that you are clearing out, we would be very grateful if you would donate them to Nursery.  Our water tray is always popular with our lads, they sometimes get a bit wet,  and we have completely run out of boys tops.  One wee soul has had to have a Minnie Mouse top today- it was all we had left!  Fortunately, he didn’t kick up a fuss and his own top is in the tumble drier so he can wear it home!  We have plenty of socks and pants, but would be very grateful for jogging trousers, t-shirts and sweatshirts!  Many thanks!!