Milngavie Early Years Centre

Now that the weather has finally cheered up, we would be very grateful if you could apply sunscreen to your child before you bring them to nursery.  If you wish to leave a named bottle of sunscreen in their shoe bag for application again later in the day- let staff know it is there!  Many thanks!

Good morning – its a beautiful morning and just the best kind of day to be in Nursery.  Fingers crossed for a week of wonderful weather!  We are going to make wind socks in the garden.  Valerie has an amazing opticians shop in the Creative Area and is looking for donations of old glasses or sun glasses to stock the shelves.  She is continuing our study of the senses which came from the interest in our bodies last term

Tuesday is gym day for The Blue and the Orange groups in the morning and for all afternoon children.

Wednesday is the start of the pre-school/Primary 1 Big Pirate Adventure in the garden.  Half of Primary 1 are coming over in the morning and the other half in the afternoon and we are going to make some piratey plans for some wicked piratey learning for Wednesdays!!!  Watch this space for news of our exploits – its going to be good fun!  Some of the staff have got their pirate costumes already.

Friday is our Snappy Sounds music day – we are looking forward to seeing Susan and playing and listening to some great music!

Why not come along for a relaxed evening of fun and frolics on Friday the 10th June in the Fraser Centre in downtown Milngavie! £5 per ticket available from Dawn & Co. BYOB

Lauren is currently working on a wee study of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  She has ordered some caterpillar eggs so we can watch the development in nursery and these are due to arrive this week!

She is also going to make sock puppets of the caterpillar with the children.  For these she needs a lot of light coloured socks.  She would be very grateful indeed, if you could raid your lost sock bag and donate any spare singletons to the caterpillar cause!

A photograph of the whole school together is being taken in Lennox Park on Wednesday afternoon at 1.30pm.

Staff will take the afternoon sessional children and the children who stay all day.

If your child comes in the morning, or does not attend on a Wednesday, and you would like them to be in the photograph, please bring them along to Lennox Park for 1.25pm.  You would have to wait with your child while they have their photo taken.

Fingers crossed for a beautiful day and lots of smiling wee faces!

In the garden on Thursday, Struan and Max found the remnants of the fire from the gardening day last week!

Being bright, inquisitive boys, they picked up some of the burnt sticks and discovered that they were black and powdery.    “Look!” said Struan “You can draw with this!”

Maureen was very impressed and told the boys they had discovered the world’s oldest pencil, called charcoal.  People have been drawing and writing with charcoal since humans discovered how to make fire.

“It’s quite messy!” said Struan when he looked at this photo.  “Look at all the black on my face and Max’s too!  I had to wash it off before I went home!”

She got them a very big bit of paper and they created this amazing charcoal drawing.

“I’ve drawn a bed and a man!” said Struan.  “I’ve drawn the sun!” said Struan

Next week we are going to investigate how else we can use charcoal, looking at some of the ways artists through the ages have used it to create pictures.

From this experience Max and Struan learned that wood, when it is burned, turns into a different material.  They experienced some of the properties of charcoal. They learned that people have used charcoal in the past to write and draw.  They have learned it is messy and they also learned that it is good to be curious.  All in all, a great morning’s work!  Well done boys!

Over the last 2 weeks Angela’s investigation of forces has moved from water force, to the force air can generate when it moves.  This came about as a result of the children using water blasters in the garden – McKenna noticed that if you skooshed the blaster without water in it, a blast of air came out.  We found that we could also move things using air force!  We did experiments in the water tray with boats, using our breath to blow them along, fans to move them and hairdryers to make them go really, really fast.

On Wednesday Angela set up an exciting experiment to have some fun with air power – rocket balloons!!! We tried to blow up balloons but it was really hard – the rubber kept pushing the air out again.

Angela had a solution to this.  She brought in a balloon pump which we all had a look at- it has a plunger which can squash the air so it moves in a big puff, into the balloon.  We all tried it on our hands to feel the pressure of the air.

The balloon pump made it much easier to put air into the balloons.

We tried letting the balloons go, once we had blown them up.

“Some balloons go high, some balloons go low and some balloons go medium!” said Hamish

We used string across the playground to make 4 race tracks for the balloons to race on.

“I wonder what will happen?” asked Angela.  “Not sure!” said Nina.  Hollie said, “It will go along the string!”

We cellotaped the balloons onto straws to begin our race.  At first, the wind kept blowing the balloons back.  We changed which end of the string we used and this was good as the balloons then moved along the strings really well. We found the smaller balloons didn’t go as far as the big ones.  Anna said,” You put the balloons on string.  Mine’s went to the end.”

Hamish said, “Hamish’s one go round and round like a circle- then to the finish line.  Anna’s goed to the end- my one is slowly, in circles – Anna’s one very fast!”

Ava said, “Air made the balloons move – my balloon won the race!”

Amelia said, “The air goes into the balloon from the pumper.  The air makes the balloon go across the string.  It falls down when there is no air left in the balloon.!”

Stewart realised that the bigger balloons went further:  “You put air in the bottom to make it go across the string.  My balloon went the furthest because it was the biggest – it had most air in it!”

“The air made my balloon fly across the string!” said McKenna

We had great fun with the balloon race and the children had the idea that next we could make things to stick on the straws and use fans to race them along the strings.  We are going to try this next week!

If your child is in the Red or Orange Groups, please could you put them in winter gear for a visit to the village.  The weather caught us all by surprise on Monday and it was FREEZING!  Its looking much the same this morning so please could we have warm coats, hats and gloves!  Oh the joys of the Scottish Spring!

Many thanks – Kate

(We’ve also got Susan and Snappy Sounds coming in so its going to be a really fun day!)

We received the following comment on the blog last week:

Good Morning

From the 16th-20th May our National Digital Learning Forum is promoting aspects of digital learning across Scotland.

The aim of the week is to promote the benefits digital learning brings to the entire learner journey and provide channels for practitioners to share existing practice with a view to making a positive impact on learning and teaching practice.

During the week I wanted to highlight the Milngavie Nursery blog as a way of engaging parents –https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/milngavienursery/

We will be using the Talking Points area on http://www.digilearn.scot to highlight interesting approaches, with the plan to focus on early years on Tuesday 17th May.

I will send through any text for your approval if you are happy for the blog to be featured.

Many thanks

Jim Fanning
Senior Education Officer/Education Scotland

Miss Murphy has given her permission – we can’t wait to hear what is said!

Time slips have been given out for our Parents’ Evening on Wednesday 25th May.  If you have not yet received one, please contact your child’s key worker or look in the group drawer.  If the time is not suitable please let us know and we can arrange an alternative time for a chat, at the beginning or end of a session instead.  We are always happy to discuss progress and your child’s Learning Journey is available at all times in the Nursery Hall, showing some examples of the work we have done together this year.