Milngavie Early Years Centre

Our pre school children have been enjoying visits to the school to spend some time getting to know their way around the infant building and playground.  These visits are  part of a range of activities and experiences designed to support our children’s transition to P1 in August.

Here are some photographs of the children enjoying their time in the school.  Visits will continue this week.

We loved practising lining up at the  door of the BIG school!

We enjoyed the learning resources in the  P1 learning area!

We had fun playing on the apparatus in P1 playground!

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We used the big sinks to wash our hands!

Children’s comments on the visit.

All of us at Milngavie Early Years Centre would like to wish all our children, mummies, daddies, grandpas and grannies in our Nursery community, a wonderful Easter break.  Nursery is closed on Friday 2nd April and Monday 5th April.  We hope you the forecast snow does not arrive and we might all enjoy some lovely spring weather.  Have fun rolling those eggs!!

Moving on to Primary 1 – Early Level Transition

Each year Milngavie EYC implement an exciting transition programme to support our children to prepare for their move into P1. This programme usually includes a joint active outdoor learning project with the current Primary 1 pupils, opportunities to meet and build relationships with key school staff, visits to the P1 learning areas in the infant building, nurturing group and individual discussions, activities to build our children’s confidence for this next step, and a graduation ceremony to acknowledge and celebrate our children’s achievements.

This year things are a little different (again!), however we are determined to provide an effective and enjoyable transition programme for our nursery leavers.

Some children will be leaving to join Milngavie Primary School and other children will be going elsewhere. If your child is not transitioning to Milngavie Primary School please let the nursery know if your child will be absent over the coming months due to attending visits/ introduction events at your chosen primary school. The nursery will liaise directly with each setting to transfer children’s records. All parents will receive a transition document to complete with their child to give to their teacher on their first day at school.

In the nursery, staff will work closely with preschool children to discuss going to school and various activities will be on offer to help children prepare for and process this next step. Please see below a list of some key picture books that will be used in nursery to support this transition.

Our active learning project will support children to get to know the P1 teachers and key school staff. Staff will visit our nursery garden to meet the children and also create short videos to explain what life is like in Primary 1. We will be exploring all the exciting outdoor challenges we normally do with our Primary 1’s and will be sharing our experiences with them via Teams meetings, videos etc. between our playrooms and their classrooms.

We are going to have another Parent Coffee Break (online on Teams). This one will take place on 21^st April at 10.15 till 10.45. Everyone is welcome, however some of the discussion will be particularly relevant to pre-school parents as we seek views about transition and graduation.

We are lucky to be able to use the school infant area over the Easter school break. We will take small groups of children over to see the P1 classrooms and Active Learning Zone, practice lining up at the P1 entrance etc, get to know the route to the classrooms and look at where they will find the cloakroom pegs and toilets. We may even practice going to the loo! This will be particularly exciting for the boys as the Infant block boys toilet has a urinal – a whole new experience for some of our lads! This will build the children’s confidence and reinforce positive expectations of starting school.

Later in April we will set up a wee school classroom role play area in our playrooms for our children to have fun playing schools. It is always great fun watching our future teachers learning to control their classes and often giving very strict lessons – and also seeing how they copy the mannerisms of the nursery staff in their role play performances.

If you click on the link below you can go into our garden and have some fun finding out about some of the creatures that live there.  Click the icons and then click the videolink button to see what is hiding there.  Its full of surprises.

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1433155306929520645

It’s a silly question to ask any parent of young children.  Sometimes sleep deprivation seems to be an integral part of the job.  With the lighter nights coming in, Julie Bannerman, our Family Champion, has put together some top tips for encouraging a good bedtime routine …..and hopefully a better sleeping pattern.  Here is Julie’s post.

Children need a good night’s sleep so that they have enough energy to get them through the day and enjoy the activities on offer. It is also important that parents and carers get adequate sleep and child free time to ensure their own needs are met too. The best way to do this is to develop good sleep patterns at an early age. Children need time to calm and regulate themselves after a busy stimulating day and be able to self soothe in to sleep. Just like adults, this takes time, so preparing for bed should be a quiet and relaxed event.

Here are some tips which can help develop a good sleep routine.

Ensure your child’s room is well ventilated, comfortably warm and not overly stimulating.

Light the room with a dim lit lamp before your child enters.

Use a night light if your child is afraid of the dark.

Set a regular bedtime. A good time for pre school children to go to be is between 6 30pm and 7 30pm.

Here is an example of what a good bedtime routine looks like:

Quiet time

Bath

Toilet

Brush teeth

Into bed

Keep calm and speak quietly

Say goodnight

To prepare for bedtime tell your child roughly 30minutes beforehand that it is soon bedtime. Enjoy story time together or other quiet activities. Put televisions of etc off and dim the lights if possible. 10 minutes beforehand tell your child to finish off then go through the routine of teeth, toilet etc.

Involve your child by going through the checklist of teeth, saying goodnight to everyone etc.

Settle your child in bed with their comforter if they have one and say goodnight. When ready to leave just go and try not to give in to requests of drink, cuddle etc. Consistency is key.

If your child seems worried tell them that you will be back to check on them in 10 minutes. Do check in 10 minutes, this builds trust. If your child is still protesting repeat the process of tucking in, kiss and walk away. Try not to engage in conversation. If after 10 minutes your child is awake but quiet, peep in but don’t converse.

In the morning praise your child and reward with sticker etc if that’s something you do. If you think your child really tried to stay in bed but just couldn’t manage then still praise them for trying and say hopefully next time you will stay in bed all night.

If you would like more tips or advice on bedtime struggles please email Julie at jbannerman@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk and cc CMcmenemy@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk

Its the week before Easter and suddenly time seems to be speeding up.  This week we are going to be learning about Easter Customs and traditions and I am hoping this will involve trying some lovely hot cross buns.  We have been talking a lot about Spring with the children and watching our frogs laying eggs, and birds in the garden collecting twigs for nests.  On Thursday, because nursery is closed on Friday and Monday, we are having a bit of an Easter Celebration.  We will be making Nest Cakes and are planning on some fun Easter sports, including bunny hop race, egg and spoon race and Get the Eggs into the Nest- a throwing beanbag/egg game.  We are keeping our fingers crossed for good weather – the forecast at the moment looks dry.

We also thought, to make Thursday a bit special, it would be nice to wear a hat to nursery.  It does not have to be an Easter Bonnet,( though it can be, if your wee one has one)- it can be any hat that they like to wear.  Please can you put their name on it though so we can return it if it gets lost.

We have a wee film of one of our wonderful staff who had got right into the spirit of things for World Book Day.  Can you guess who the Masked Reader might bee?  She was very buzzy that day!!!  Click the link to see the video.

https://video.link/w/Vylgc

One of the visitors to our pond this week.

A mummy frog beside a very big mound of eggs.

We found frogs hopping all around the garden.

Debbie carefully picked them up and popped them into the new pond.

We loved watching the frogs swimming and popping their heads up out of the water.

The frogs laid lots and lots of frogs spawn!

Debbie lifted out some frogs eggs for us to see them. They were very slimy!

We are so lucky to have had the opportunity to watch frogs mating and laying eggs in the garden pond.  We have been amazed by the number of frogs who came to visit and the amount of frogspawn we have.  It has stimulated a very real interest to find out lots more about frogs and we have been reading books, doing Frog Lifecycle jigsaws and watching out for all things froggy.  Out in the garden and playground we have been singing songs about frogs, and we even watched the deeply irritating Crazy Frog on our interactive whiteboard.  This is real planning in the moment.  The children’s fascination is obvious and it is wonderful to see them enjoying their learning and discussing it with friends.  Over the next few months we will be watching the eggs develop and sharing our knowledge with our friends over in Primary 1, who have also been over to look in the pond.

Our fish – Bubbles Dan McSplasherfish aka  Michael Buble has returned from a very long holiday at Jenny’s house.  The Orrell family very kindly looked after Bubbles over lockdown and returned him to us yesterday.  The children were so excited to see him in his new position in the nursery hall.  However they thought he looked a bit lonely, and Kate and Callum went to the pet shop to see if a suitable friend for Bubbles could be found.  ( We would normally have taken a group of children but Covid regulations only allowed one!)  Callum did a great job of choosing a lovely fishy friend and they seem to like each other!

Callum was very excited to see Rocket the Parrot in the Pet Shop window.

There were lots of fish to choose from.

Callum chose a Black Moor fish with a lovely silvery tummy.

The pet shop lady caught the fish in a net and then put him in a plastic bag with water in it.

Callum is thinking about a name for the fish – he quite likes “Silvery Fish”   Everyone loves the fish that Callum chose for us – the tank has lots of visitors who like to stand and enjoy our fishy friends swimming happily round their tank.

Bubbles, looking huge and happy to be home.

Free Parking!!!!

The warmer, drier weather is coming and lots of our little people love to come to nursery on their bikes and scooters.  Over the winter we were happy to have the bikes and scooters in our vestibule, but as the numbers increase this will not be logistically possible, so we are suggesting that you chain your bikes and scooters up at the Nursery Bike and Scooter Rack.  This is just in front of the nursery, next to the garden wall.

This has been well used in previous years, and saves parents the scary experience of having to scoot home on their child’s scooter.  The gradient on the School Brae is not for the faint hearted and there is always the danger you might end up through the window of the HoneyBee Bakery.

Nikki has put up a lovely new sign to encourage parking in the rack.  We hope you will find it useful and that there is lots of warm, dry, good cycling and scooting weather, this Spring and Summer.

Last week the rainbow bubble children had the excitement of finding lots of frogs hopping about in our garden.  Our brave frog whisperer, Debbie introduced them to our new pond, very cleverly built by Eric, and very quickly there was a lot of croaking and  froggy fighting over the lady frogs.

We came in to nursery this morning to find a large amount of frogs spawn.  The children (and the staff if the truth be told) were super excited.  We’ve been reading books about frogs and doing frog lifecycle jigsaws – frogmania has begun.

It is quite special to watch our children leaning over the pond and having an eye-to-eye chat with a wee frog.  The frogs seem to enjoy it too – they swim up and pop their heads out of the water as if they are saying hello.  Over the next couple of months we will be watching the pond carefully and learning all about the development from spawn, to tadpoles and hopefully into wee froglets.

We are really lucky to have such a beautiful outdoor area which is so full of wildlife. Will post the photos tomorrow!

We are experiencing a severe shortage of spare trousers for our nursery cupboard.  We have completely run out of boys trousers and are also short of socks, pants and girls trousers too.

We would be very grateful if your wee one  has had borrowed trousers, if you could return them to us.  We would also be grateful for donations of ones your child has grown out of, to keep in our drawer for emergencies.