Milngavie Early Years Centre

 Jinny is our HNC student studying for an HNC in Early Education and Childcare.  She will be with us on Mondays and Tuesdays until June 2017.  This week Jinny has been working on art activities with the children and has made beautiful flowers with celery prints and amazing sunflowers with real sunflower seed centres.  Scott told Jinny that he found sunflower seeds in the middle of a sunflower at home.  Jinny is a woman of many talents and we are looking forward to all the ideas and activities that she will bring into our nursery!

This morning Lauren picked all the brambles in her garden to bring in to nursery!! Brilliant job Lauren!  Many thanks!

Cora’s mum reminded me that we could ask people to recycle their old jam jars with lids in Nursery too.  Perfect for our Bramble Jelly!!

All glass jars will be very gratefully received.

This year our wonderful  PTA have slightly changed how we do our printed Christmas cards.  Instead of each child doing their drawing at Nursery, the order form will be sent home and you can see what your child is drawing for their card and choose the greeting you want printed.  You then return the form to us by Wednesday 28th September with the payment.  This is a simpler and more efficient method than we have used in the past and gives you a chance to design the card with your child if you wish.  The art work can be A4 or A5 and it is best to try out designs on A4 or A5 paper and then stick it on to the order form using a glue stick.  (Paper clips or staples will damage the artwork so please do not use!)

We need these back by Wed 28th Sept to have them printed in time so please be as prompt as you can, in returning them!

Many thanks and Merry Christmas!

We are going to make bramble jelly with the children for our Christmas Enterprise Venture this year.  If you are looking for a “fun for all the family” activity for the September weekend or the October week – we would be so grateful if you would collect us some brambles, freeze them and bring them in to Nursery for us to put in the jam!  We are collecting brambles from the two big patches of them that are left on our orchard site.  Next year we will have a choice of various different soft fruits that will be growing in our orchard and maybe even some apples and plums!  This year though we would be grateful for as many brambles as you can collect!!!

 On Friday, Elisabeth brought in her Native American Teepee for the children to play with in the playground.  They loved it and enjoyed looking at all the different horses on it and deciding which one they liked best!

This week in Nursery we welcome 2 students for their Nursery Placement of a PGDE Primary Teaching Qualification.  They both come from Strathclyde University and will be with us till 7th October

Catherine Stewart

Lucy Turner

On Monday the photographer from Milngavie and Bearsden Herald is coming to photograph some of our children working on planting bulbs in the orchard, making a lovely patch of yellow for the bees in the springtime.  We are also picking brambles from the remaining bramble bushes in the orchard site to make bramble jelly for our Christmas Enterprise.  Next year we will be able to make an even wider range of jams and jellies from the fruit bushes that we are planting in our orchard.

Tuesday – Blue and Orange Groups for Gym today

Friday – Nursery Closed for Mid Term Holiday, Monday is a holiday too!  Next week will be Tuesday Morning News instead!

Today at the art table Maureen talked to the children about bees, and invited the children to cut out and stick together amazing bee puppets.  We went out into the orchard and looked at the flowers that have been planted specially for bees.  We listened to them buzzing on the lavender and on the heather flowers.  Then we took our own bees up to the corner of the orchard where the bee hives are going to be placed in the spring.  Our bees loved the orchard.  We are really looking forward to seeing even more real ones next year.  When we came in, we watched a video on you tube of a man putting bees into a new hive- lots of them with just one queen.  He had to protect his bee hives from bears!  At least we don’t have to worry about that!  Our bee hives will be inside cages to stop anyone going too close!

On Monday morning Angela was in the story corner with Struan, Coen and Orla.  They chose a story – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’, by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury – a real Nursery favourite.  After they had listened to the story, Angela asked if they could tell her the story so she could write it down to put on the wall.  All 3 children sat round the writing table with Angela and retold her the story.  They all remembered the important parts of the story – by retelling it to Angela, they showed that they had really listened and understood the book.  They had thought about what they had heard and were able to use their own language to put it together again for Angela.  This is a complex thing to do when you are 3 and 4 and you can see how much language and vocabulary these children have developed.  Angela scribed their stories to put on the writing area wall! Great job everyone

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Good morning – hope you had a great weekend!  This week in nursery we welcome back Jinny Kim – our HNC student – who will be with us on Mondays and Tuesdays.

On Tuesday it is the turn of the Yellow, Red and Green Groups to visit the gym.

On Thursday – Kate will be out of nursery at an Early Years Literacy Seminar.

On Friday we are looking forward to another happy musical adventure with Susan and her Snappy Sounds!

We are looking for kitchen roll tubes for our Bee Hive!

This week Maureen is making a bee hive in the art area and is looking for kitchen roll tubes to make the cells of the hive.  We are currently looking at all the animals we know that live in our orchard and bees are going to be very important to us!!