Milngavie Early Years Centre

Today is India’s 68th Republic day – this date is when the constitution of India came into effect.  It is marked by marches and celebrations throughout the country.  People dress up in their best clothes.  Today Republic Day came to Milngavie!

This beautiful girl is wearing a special dress because it is a special day – Republic Day -in India today! Thanks for introducing us to a new celebration!!!

This morning we are having some football coaching from Danny – our SFA coach.  Tomorrow we are starting to learn about Chinese New Year.  Scott very kindly brought in beautiful traditional silk Chinese clothes- a boys set and a girls dress to show us.  We are going to create a fabulous dragon head in the art area this week, and on Friday we are all taking part in a dragon dance round the school to wish people “Kung Hay Fat Choi!” and bring in the Year of the Cockerel in style!  Jinny – our lovely student is full of cold today and couldn’t come to nursery, but we have plans to watch a wee film about Chinese New Year tomorrow.

Gym on Tuesday is for the Blue and Orange groups.  We had great fun with a massive parachute last week – who knows what will happen tomorrow?  The ladies no doubt have a plan”!  Red, Yellow and Green groups will be exploring feelings, in PATHS.

Last week Lynn went on a “Word Aware” course and has come back with lots of good ideas on how we might all extend our vocabularies.  We are going to start a “Words of the Week” wall in the hall and I’ll let you know what they are on the blog too.  We are looking forward to learning some really interesting words to drop into our conversations!  If anyone has a favourite word, (which can be shared by children!!)  we welcome suggestions!

I went on a course on Nursery Planning- not nearly as exciting as Lynn’s – but I have come back with the resolve to listen to the children even more than we normally do, to pick up on what their interests really are and what they want to be learning.

Lynn’s next course is next Tuesday – a thrilling Cooksafe refresher course!!!

We have been on a number bonanza this week – numbers have appeared everywhere throughout our nursery.

She made house cards with door numbers. The doors open and the corresponding number of dots are found inside.

The dots allow the children to count out the number. They then put the same amount of bears on the house.

Maureen created a great game to play with the compare bears

This is a great game as it encourages children to count and it consolidates and extends number recognition.  Maureen has introduced numbers 10-20 so that she can extend the knowledge of children who confidently recognise to 10.   We love this very creative approach – thanks Maureen!

Angela too, has been very busy making number resources – look at her fab number bingo – numbers one to five on one side, for children just beginning to know the shapes of the numbers, and 1-10 for our more confident mathematicians on the other side.

Number Bingo

She took numbers outside – the cars now have numbers and numbered parking spaces!

Ian’s favourite car is number 3.

Mastering reverse parking into a numbered space is a challenge.

There are even numbers in the water tray!

Fishing for numbers with nets and magnets in the water tray.

Happy Monday!  This is nursery registration week, so if your wee one is coming back for a pre-school year next year – please fill in a continuation form.

Numbers are on the planning again this week.  We are honing our counting skills, recognising numbers and for the very clever cookies, sequencing numbers and working on the numbers before and after.  A wee group is very interested in larger numbers so we will be investigating numbers to 20 and beyond with them.

On Monday we have SFA Football training.  On Tuesday we have gym for the Red, Green and Yellow groups and PATHS for the Blue and Orange Groups.  We are going to be looking at “Feelings” in PATHS and Twiggle the Turtle will choose a Blue and Orange Wee Person of the Week to be the group helper.

Lynn and Kate are on training courses this week – Lynn is Vocabulary building on Wednesday and Kate is on a twilight inservice on Planning on Thursday night.

Friday is music day and Susan will be bringing Mr Snappy, his friends and all her instruments for us all to play.

Next week is Chinese New Year Week – Our lovely student Jinny Kim is going to tell us all about New Year in Korea.  We will be making a special Dragon and on Friday we are going on a Dragon Dance through the school to wish everyone lots of luck and good fortune in the new Year of the Cockerel.  Celebrations give us the chance to discuss cultural diversity in Nursery in a way that is fun for the children.  It helps us learn a bit about traditions of other cultures, and understand that Scotland is a multi-cultural country.

Looking forward to another fun filled week of learning!!

Ps – HAS ANYONE LOST A TOYOTA KEY WITH A SILVER KEY FOB!!  It was found in our cloakroom before Christmas!! It’s now in the staffroom!

Valerie has asked me to put a special message on the blog to thank everyone for their support and generosity.  She is quite overwhelmed with the huge amount of  money and the lovely messages of support she has received.  It has meant an awful lot to her.

She is hoping to be back at work quite soon but didn’t want to leave it till then to thank everyone.

We are all missing her, both children and staff, and hope to be welcoming her back, as soon as she is ready.  The nursery is just not the same without her!!

Just look what grew, thanks to Lynn and the children, around our Nursery lookout post.

The children had told Lynn they thought the space would be a great tree house, as you were up above the nursery looking down.  What a great idea!

Watch this space for news of adventures in the tree house- the animals that might visit, the beasties we might see, the things that might happen.

Many thanks to Lynn for taking forward this idea – it’s an inspired way to stimulate imagination and creativity.

Here is the tree that grew in a day!

This afternoon Ava and Lynn asked Oscar if he would like to help playdough, for the playdough table.  Lynn had a recipe and Oscar and Ava had to look at the numbers to see how many cupfuls of flour, water and salt, and how many table spoonfuls of oil and cream of tartar.  Luckily, both Ava and Oscar are great counters, and know their numbers, and the playdough turned out really well.  Today the colouring in the playdough was yellow, which was just as well, as yellow is Oscar’s favourite colour.

This morning we discovered that sound can travel through a tube.        Kate set the boys a challenge- how could they talk to someone in the far away playhouse without having to shout.  They tried stretching the tube they had. It didn’t work – it was too short.  “We could join two tubes together!” said Max.  They ended up joining 3 tubes together.  “Maybe the noise won’t reach the end?” thought Struan.  We decided to try anyway – Kate helped the boys duct-tape the tubes together.  Scott nipped off to the playhouse with the end of the big, long tube.  Struan said,”Scott – can you hear me?” down his end of the tube.  The windows of the playhouse popped open, like a cuckoo clock and Scott popped his head out and shouted “Yes!!”  It took a wee while to master the idea that one had to listen if the other was talking, but it was mastered as soon as we discovered that very loud noises down the tube could give the person at the other end a fright.  So much for making the  playground quieter!

Next, we might investigate how else we can communicate across a distance using other things we can find in the nursery.  I’m feeling a strong urge to collect tin cans and string, but who knows what else we might come up with!

If you talk or make a noise into one end of the tube you can hear it at the other end- said Struan.

Some of our morning boys were having fun with tubes in the nursery playground.

The tube now stretched all the way from the climbing frame into the playhouse.

On our first day back, the weather was extra cold. In the playground the water in one of our play trays had frozen into a big solid sheet.  This gave us a real chance to investigate the properties ice has.

It’s very, very cold – said Millie

It’s not so cold if you hold it with gloves!

Charlie had a great idea! He went into nursery and found some plastic tongs to lift the ice with! My hands don’t get cold if I lift it with this- he said.

Look at this big bit! It makes a splash when you throw it into the water!

Ice is very slippy! It tries to slip out of the tongs!

Before we broke the ice there was a piece of wood frozen into it! It is very hard- said Oliver! You can drive a car on it!

Its got bubbles in it! It’s like glass – you can see through it too!

It melts into water if you hold it in your hand! It makes your hand a bit stingy!

The ice floats on the top of the water!

What a lot of things ice is!!!

Happy Monday everyone!  This is Primary 1 Registration week – time to register our pre-schoolers at their catchment school and if necessary put in a placing request.  This year you need lots of id with you- Your Child’s Birth Certificate, Council Tax letter/document, Utility Bill and either a Child Benefit letter, Bank Statement or Tax Credit Award Notice.

In Nursery this month our curriculum and skills focus is on numbers.  We are going to be counting, and raising the awareness of numbers throughout the whole nursery.  A good knowledge of numbers 1-10 makes life a lot easier in Primary 1 and we have good fun learning the concept of counting at Nursery.  We sing and dance numbers, we play with numbers, we count, sort and match numbers and we use numbers in our baking and measuring.

In our PATHS sessions this week we are looking at our emotions and how we tell if someone is happy, sad, etc.

Looking forward to a happy week of learning and fun, as our wee, new recruits settle in and realise that it’s not too bad a place to be!