Milngavie Early Years Centre

2 great pieces of news to start our week -First,  Valerie is back!!!!  We are so glad to welcome back our wee team leader who has been through such a rough time lately.  We are looking forward to being a complete team again- her sense of humour has been greatly missed! It’s really great to have her back!

Second!  Our garden is back in action!  An amazing bunch of hard grafting volunteers came yesterday and cleared up all the mess the vandals made in our garden, making it safe for outdoor play.  A huge thank you to everyone who came – an enormous amount was done and the garden is looking great again.  Thanks to Katie Risk for the delicious soup and home made bread at half time – it really kept us all going.  The orchard also had some work done too!  Bird boxes were put up and lots of measuring for gates, polytunnel and paths took place.  So far our trees are wintering really well and lots of the plants have actually grown.  The daffodils the nursery put in are coming up already.  Spring is on its way!

This week we are looking at pattern in nursery – patterns in nature, patterns in sound and movement, patterns around the home and nursery and creating patterns ourselves.  Looking forward to a very creative week!

Monday – we have SFA football coaching

Tuesday – Orange and Blue Groups for Gym

Wednesday – Pam is on a REHIS course all day

Thursday – Lending Library will be open

Friday – Everyone is happy because Monday and Tuesday are our half term holiday- Nursery is closed next Wednesday too as there is an inservice day for staff!

East Dunbartonshire Council has opted to use a resource called Word Aware within its nurseries and schools to increase the vocabulary of children.  Lynn, Kate and Valerie are having training on its use and March is going to be a month with a literacy focus as we introduce some of the ideas from the course.

We have looked at how our colleagues in Clober Nursery have embraced the scheme, and have got lots of great ideas from them.  We are introducing “Author of the Month” , and will be looking at the work of Julia Donaldson in March.  There is lots of rhyme in Julia’s books and plenty of interesting words, ideas and characters to explore.  The walls in the book corner will reflect the work of the Author of the Month- please come in and see what we have been up to.  We will also identify interesting new words which we will make our Words of the Week.

As well as all this, we are relaunching the Nursery Lending Library – we are putting the Lending Library books out, in baskets, on the hall table on Thursdays, and if your child would like to borrow one, please just fill in what you have borrowed on your child’s page in their group folder and mark it off when you bring it back.  If your child doesn’t come to nursery on a Thursday – just ask your keyworker and she will get the books out for you!

In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, it is even more important not to forget about the power and pleasure of reading books.  Children that are read to regularly tend to find learning to read far easier and have better vocabulary.

There is nothing like a good plate of home made soup to fill you with vitamins, natural fibre and anti-oxidants.  This week Lynn provided some soup making materials for the children and showed them how to chop up the vegetables, add stock and cook on the stove.  The results were some very delicious soup.  Ava, Aarav and Scott made lovely Scottish vegetable soup, with carrots, onions, turnips and leeks.  It’s quite hard work chopping the veg with the, ‘not very sharp at all!’ children’s knives we have in nursery and it takes a lot of determination to complete a whole pan of soup!  Luckily all our children are determined wee folk and they managed it all- working well as a team.  On Thurs another group of soup chefs cooked up a lovely pan of broccoli soup, with onion, carrot and broccoli.   Lynn- out fittest staff member is very keen on good nutrition and. who knows where these super-healthy soup chefs will end up- perhaps Master Chef or even a body building contest for super fit folk!

This morning Jan, Aaron’s mum – brought Nursery a lovely present.  She had managed to find 6 Wipe Clean Number Books.  Jan is an amazing bargain hunter – she sources items throughout the year for charity hampers.  She has brought books for the school and nursery at fabulous low prices and donated them to us.  Thank you Jan – you are a star!

Happy Monday everyone- we’re looking forward to another happy, busy week in Nursery.  Today we have our SFA football coaching.

On Tuesday afternoon, Lynn is out of nursery on a thrilling Cooksafe course.  Our gym groups today are the Reds, Greens and Yellows.  Blue and Orange groups are doing PATHS- this week we are looking at happiness and sharing.

On Thursday our lending library will be open for business and you are very welcome to help your child choose a book to borrow.  Just write down what you have borrowed on your child’s page in the group folder.

Kate is out at a Cluster meeting for Milngavie Schools for Early Years and P1 on Thursday pm.

Susan is bringing Mr Snappy for more musical fun on Friday.

This week we are continuing to focus on numbers and counting and we are going to do a survey of all the different colours of cars in our school car park.  Great fun!

This week we visited the Meitai restaurant in the village.  We met Leni, who had gone to lots of trouble to gather things to show us.  She showed us the lovely decorations in the restaurant and had looked up music and a video of a Parade on her laptop to show us.  She told us about what her family do at Chinese New Year.  It was a really great visit and we learned a lot.

Yesterday we visited the Meitai again to deliver a dragon card we had made to say thanks and wish everyone in the restaurant very good luck in the Year of the Rooster.

If you have never eaten at the Meitai, it is well worth a visit- the food is amazing and the staff could not be friendlier!

Jinny showed us how to make Mandu – Korean dumplings traditionally eaten at New Year.

Mandu are little dumplings – you make them with circles of pastry filled with scrambled, salted cucumber and oyster sauce.

We had to put in the filling and put water round the outside of the pastry to act as the glue to seal it.

We watched a video about a little girl called Abi who was celebrating Chinese New Year in Liverpool with her family. We learned about some of the things people do to welcome the new year and bring good luck.

Jinny then steamed the Mandu for us – they were delicious!

Picking up mushrooms with chopsticks is tricky!

Batman is a champ at eating Brussel Sprouts with his chopsticks!

Some of us were lucky enough to visit Leni in the Meitai restaurant in the village. Leni told us lots about Chinese New Year.

The restaurant had been decorated with Red Chinese Lanterns- Red is a lucky colour!

Here we are outside the restaurant!

When we go out we have to take a partner’s hand and walk in a line.

There were lucky Chinese lions on the window ledge of the restaurant.

Leni showed us the lucky red envelopes Chinese children are given at New Year. They have lucky money in them. These ones had Mickey Mouse on them.

Leni told us about cleaning the house for New Year and putting a firecracker on either side of the door to ward off bad luck. She told us all the children get new pyjamas for New Year and it is a real celebration – a bit like our Christmas. She played us Chinese music and showed us a New Year parade on her laptop.

Today we are welcoming in the Year of the Rooster- it’s Chinese New Year.  All week we have been learning about Chinese celebrations and have tried writing Chinese Numbers which look different to Scottish ones.