Milngavie Early Years Centre

 Pam, our lovely HNC student, created a great activity which the boys in the afternoon session really enjoyed.  She read the story – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and created an amazing multi-sensory experience with all the different places in the story on one big board.  There was a bear and a house and some wee figures, which the children used to re-tell the story.  Pam is into the final month of her course and is working extra hard just now.  She has really brought some new and different experiences into our nursery this year, and the children have really enjoyed all of them – she is going to be an excellent Early Years Worker!!

This morning, Maureen, who is our outdoor play person just now, tried a really nice writing activity in the garden.  She put out different natural materials: chalk, slate, charcoal, sand, sticks and leaves and invited the children to come and make their names.  It was lovely to watch them trying the different materials as the experience was highly sensory.  Each material had a different texture and some, like the charcoal and the leaves had a special smell.  It not only gave practice in recognising and writing their names, it also was a great chance to talk about the sounds different letters made and a bit of a challenge to use the materials creatively to make letters.  Holly was very clever in combining sticks and chalk to make her name on the slate.  She would have had to look for ages for a circular stick so she improvised. What a smart cookie!

In the afternoon Maureen changed the activity to pattern sequencing.  Recognising, copying and creating simple patterns is part of the Early Level Maths curriculum.  The children loved this too, and the descriptive language about colours, textures etc was excellent.

This morning Ronnie made a very sad discovery.  Our little amphibian friend Joey was lying beside the pond, quite still.

Ronnie carefully picked him up – he thought he might be asleep – but after a little while we realised he wasn’t sleeping – he was dead.  He took him to Angela, who helpfully found a wee box to put Joey in while they thought about what to do.

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Ronnie thought we maybe should put him back in the pond – a sort of burial at sea – however the majority of the children in the group thought that they should bury him.  They looked for a nice place in the garden and found one right up in the back corner.  They set about digging a wee froggy grave and when it was deep enough, they laid him to rest and covered him up.  They made a wee wooden cross out of twigs and packing tape, and Emma drew a lovely picture of Joey on a bit of cardboard, which Leo coloured in green.  When they had put these on the grave to mark the spot, they collected some flowers for him.  They thought of a nice song to sing to lay him to rest and decided on “One Little Speckled Frog” which they all sang to him.  Ronnie was a bit sad.  He said he had wanted to kiss Joey before he was buried, but Angela told him that frogs might not be very hygienic and it was best to leave kissing them to princesses.  All the children involved in this were interested in what had happened to the frog.  They were respectful to him and knew that we should do something special with his body.  An experience like this, sensitively handled – as it was, by Angela – helps children to understand the concept of death.  It was not traumatic or sensationalist – it was just handled in a matter-of-fact way.  The things that humans do when someone dies were talked about, and the children were happy to have a funeral for the frog.  To me, this is a far better way to teach about religious and moral education than stories in a book or an abstract discussion-  a sad, but very valuable lesson.

Parent’s Evening is this Wednesday, 25^th May

If you have forgotten what your appointment time is, or if you can’t make it and want to have a chat, please talk to your child’s key worker. We can arrange another time for you.

Monday- its a gorgeous day so we’re in the garden- to check up on Joey the frog , smell the flowers and write our names using a variety of different natural materials!  Sounds like fun!

Tuesday – gym day – am groups – Yellow, Red and Green.

Wednesday – Pirate Day – Setting sail for more exciting adventures, hopefully not in the pouring rain, with our pre-school children and Primary 1.

Parents Evening at Nursery  – 6-9pm

Thursday – Nursery is closed.  Staff are having some Forest School Training from Angela who recently attended a course on this.  We are going to the woods to do this so we are praying for a dry, midge free day!

Friday and Monday – Nursery is closed for the May Weekend Holiday!  Happy holidays everyone!

Remember our Big Nursery Night out on the 10th June – tickets on sale in the nursery hall. Grannies, Aunties, childminders, friends all welcome!

On Friday we had a water fun day in Nursery.  Groups went out into the garden where our friend, Anne Madsen had set up some experiments for us to try.  Anne knows a lot about water as at the moment she is a ship builder – an chief engineer at BAE.  Anne asked us what happens if we turn a glass of water upside down.  We know, from many experiences at the snack table, that water (and milk) fall out of the glass onto the floor if you don’t hold the glass upright!

Hands up if you think the water will come out of the cup if you turn it upside down

Anne told us that she was going to show us how you could turn it upside down and keep the water in.  She took a cup of water and a piece of foam jigsaw which she placed over it, like a lid.  She turned it upside down and put it over Kate’s head! The water did not come out!  Phew!

“Look – I turned it upside down and the water is staying in!”

We tested the experiment by holding the full cup upside down over Kate’s head!

Then we tried putting a piece of paper over the cup of water and turning it upside down!

We even tried a piece of paper with a hole in it, which – if the hole was small enough-still worked!

We really enjoyed trying the experiments – we are going to try them at home but only in the bath!!!!!  It was great fun trying them over the heads of the staff- especially when it went a wee bit wrong!

Trying out a new water trick over Maureen’s head- woops!

“That was fun!”

Anne then showed us how to have fun with syphons – this involved more soaking of staff, which the children found very funny.  We then had to climb up on the benches and be a mountain so Anne could show us how you can make water flow uphill and down again using a syphon.

Kate gets her own back on Maureen and Anne by blowing down the tube and soaking them both!

The water flowed up from a bucket behind the mountain, over the mountain and back down again to fill a bucket on the ground!

We loved these water experiments and now Anne has shown Kate, Maureen, Elisabeth and Eileen how to do them we will be trying them ourselves at the outdoor water tray!  Many, many thanks to Anne for coming in to Nursery to show us how much fun science really is!

“How good is this?”

This year we have had some very skillful cyclists – Maureen and Lynn have been on a special course to learn cycle training for early years and we have been given some new bikes.  The children love these, and the number of confident riders of two wheelers this year is amazing.  It is lovely to watch the concentration on the face of a wee one who is just getting the hang of the pedals and the pleasure when they finally manage to go by themselves.  This morning Maureen added challenge for our cyclists by introducing cones which they had to ride in and out of.  Ewan was keen to make it a competition and wrote the scores on the outdoor  chalkboards. Amelie worked really, really hard on trying to ride her bike all by herself and managed it quite a few times.  We are hoping to take a video of her later on this afternoon! Well done Amelie!

Today Sam wrote another blockbuster book!  This one is called “The Creature!” He was so keen to put it on the blog – he came in and helped take the pictures and write this story about it.

 Isn’t it just brilliant!

This was yesterday’s bestseller – a story about his dad! I think we have a John Grisham in the making!

We noticed something very exciting this morning.  Two of our caterpillars had turned into cocoons.  “If we have 2 caterpillars and 2 cocoons – how many do we have altogether? ”   -Greta was asked. Without a second’s hesitation she said,”Four!”  Clever girl!

The cocoons attach themselves onto the lid of the jar.

James noticed that the cocoons actually look smaller than the caterpillars.  “Maybe they curl up really small!” he said.  We noticed that there was a lot of spider’s web type silk in the jar and we thought they might wrap themselves up in it.  We are going to watch the other two very carefully to see how they become cocoons.