Milngavie Early Years Centre

Yesterday one of our Nursery Superstars – our amazing wee Ellis – completed an amazing feat.  She undertook a sponsored Cycle of the whole reservoir- a huge cycle for a little person – in aid of the Nursery Garden Wall appeal, and she raised an absolutely astounding £166!  Many, many thanks to Ellis and her family.   This brings the total donated to our wall appeal now to £371.  Look at the wonderful pictures of our wee cyclist in action.

  Ellis and her family – ready to go!

   Ellis’ wee sister was there to support her too!    

It was a very long way for a little person……..

… but our Ellis managed to cycle right round.

Here is a very proud Ellis, with her sponsor form, after finishing her amazing cycle.

16 people sponsored Ellis and she raised an absolutely fantastic £166.

This week in nursery we are planting some special trees at the back of our orchard.  We are planting Rowans, willows and other fast growing trees in the back corner of the orchard to encourage even greater biodiversity in our orchard.  Wednesday will be a day for wellies and digging.  We will post the photos to show you our new wee forest.

Last week’s World Book Day was great fun and we had lots of great stories.  Debbie brought in a magic wee light which projected photos of the characters from books onto the ceiling in our wee dark room.  This was really popular with the children, who loved the special atmosphere of reading in the dark.  We had great fun with book hunts in the orchard and the garden and really enjoyed celebrating the joy of reading and looking through books!  We made Book Worm cakes and had them for snack and also ate our way through the fruit that the Very Hungry Caterpillar had scoffed in Eric Carles’ lovely book.

We are really enjoying being fully open again! Some children are in the Daisy bubble (playground side) and some are in the Rainbow bubble (garden side). All children remain in their original groups with their original Keyworker (unless parents have requested/ been notified of a change). However some groups are accessing a different bubble than the one allocated prior to lockdown due to our increasing numbers! A big well-done to all our children for a fantastic start to the new term! Here are some photos of the fun so far!

Tomorrow is World Book Day and we always like to celebrate the event in Nursery.  We sometimes dress up as favourite characters from books and we all talk about and share our favourite stories.

This year, due to covid restrictions, we cannot bring in our own books.  Do not worry!  We have a wonderful nursery library with lots of fabulous books to explore.  We can still dress up – if we keep it to a costume and leave any props that we would normally bring, safely at home.  My broomstick is staying in the hall cupboard this year!!  If your little one wants to dress up, that is wonderful, but if this is just a step too far for either your child or yourself, it is absolutely grand to arrive as yourself!

We have planned some crazy book activities including a quiz and a book hunt in the garden and orchard, and are having a book themed snack too.  We are looking forward to some literary fun – raising awareness of how precious books can be.

Spring weather makes such a difference to our nursery.  Almost all the children choose to go outside in the fresh air and our  building becomes quite quiet.  The space we have at Milngavie to run and explore makes outside play a firm favourite with children and staff.  The engagement in learning outside is visibly deeper and the children enjoy the freedom more personal space.

Thanks to our good friend Eric Avenier – our garden is now even better.  Eric has worked tirelessly for the last few weeks, braving freezing and pouring weather, to finish the huge wall of sleepers in our garden, so our wee ones can have full run of the area.   The new steps are built and Eric has managed to finish the job beautifully with a railing and slabs, all beautifully fitted.  He has done an amazing job!  Thanks to all our Welly Waddlers who have raised money to help fund this project.  We know that one of our wee people has decided to do a sponsored bike ride instead!  It is still not too late if you want to do something different to raise money to donate.

Today’s Coffee Break on-line with Lynn and Julie was great.  Many thanks to those who came along and shared their ideas.  One of the suggestions was that we might introduce all the members of staff in both bubbles so new parents might be able to identify them.  We will do this over this week.  Look out for news on upcoming Coffee Breaks on the blog.  It’s a great way to meet and chat to other parents while we are restricted in doing this in person.

In the Rainbow Room today –

In the Daisy Room today-

Joshua Tennant-Milngavie EYCs new afternoon early years worker- works till 6 every evening!

Rong Biegus – [pronounced Rooni] Early Years Worker at Oakburn EYC

Elaine Campbell – Early Years Worker at Oakburn EYC

In the past two weeks we have welcomed 2 new members of staff to our staff team – Nikki Canavan and Emma Carson.  Nikki is our new admin assistant, working in the nursery office and Emma is our new afternoon cleaner.

With our recent return to nursery, we are focussing on our feelings – emotionally checking in with all our little people.  Our new recruits are settling really well and are beginning to know that nursery is a fun place, and that Mummies and Daddies always come back for you.  It is good for us to acknowledge that all emotions are ok.  It is comforting for children to understand this and learn to recognise and manage the more tricky emotions in a safe and nurturing environment.   We will be playing fun games and reading great stories which help us learn to do this.   Children aged 3-5 are just building up a realisation that other people may think and feel differently to themselves – discovering a sense of self.  You might even find your child becomes interested in how you are feeling too!

If you have recently joined nursery or have not yet sent in a photo of your family for our family tree, it would be great if you could send one.  Our little ones love pointing out their families to their friends and it also gives a real link to home if you feel a bit wobbly!

Due to social distancing measures parents no longer have the opportunity to chat with other parents at drop-off / pick-up time. We are also unable to invite parents into the centre for our previously very successful and well attended Tea and Talk parent sessions. Our survey results show that parents are missing having a blether with staff and other parents and therefore are keen to take part in our online parent coffee break. We have arranged for the first online parent coffee break to take place on Monday 1st March at 10am.  All parents and carers welcome! So pop the kettle on, pour yourself a cuppa and join Julie (our Family Champion), some staff and other parents for an informal catch-up online. To take part please email cmcmenemy@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk

The Scottish Government and the Parent Club have developed a campaign to help parents understand the current restrictions. The key messages of the campaign are: adults wear face coverings at drop off / pick-up,  1 adult only at drop off/ pick-up, adults remain 2 metres apart, avoid car-sharing and self-isolate if anyone in your household has symptoms.

If you currently use informal childcare in addition to nursery – perhaps grandparents or relatives- the following link might be useful for any questions relating to Covid restrictions.

https://www.parentclub.scot/articles/your-guide-childcare

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the fund for our new wall of sleepers.  Eric has been working extremely hard in all weathers.  He dug out all the rotten wood and made new, level concrete foundations.  He has built a very strong,  retaining wall from sleepers.  This is a massive improvement on what was there before- both in terms of strength and aesthetics!  Eric is also putting in a set of steps so we can access the upper level of the garden more quickly and we are planning on moving some tables up there to use for arts and crafts and picnics in the summer.

This is a huge project – the materials are all expensive because they need to last.  We could not even think about tackling this project without Eric, who is working for us for free.

We are very grateful for all contributions – thank you so much for your very kind donations.  If you have not yet donated and would like to, there is still time.  You can send Welly Waddle Donations in to nursery in an envelope. Many, many thanks for helping us complete this urgent project.  We are really looking forward to a time when we can invite mums and dads into the nursery garden for a garden party, to see all the amazing improvements Eric has carried out this year.

We are so happy to be able to welcome our children back into nursery today, and are looking forward to a fun week with our friends.  We are also welcoming some new children and families to our wee nursery community, and hope that we can make them feel happy and settled very quickly.  The weather is meant to be dry today so we’ll be exploring our outdoor spaces and getting to know them again.

A plea from our staff – please could all clothing for nursery be clearly labelled with your child’s name.  Particularly shoes and wellies!  As we encourage independence, things inevitably end up in strange places and, without a name, can be hard to return to their owner.  Because of our covid restrictions, please don’t let your wee one bring toys or bags into nursery.  Spare clothes can be put in the nursery bag on their peg.  Please just hand them to staff at the gate.  Many thanks with this.

The children come in to nursery via the Daisy Room Playground and the Nursery Ramp (for the Rainbow Room).  This morning if you head for the ramp, a member of our staff will welcome you and direct your child to their room for this week.

It feels really good to be returning to a little bit of normal.  Hopefully it won’t be long till all our children are back at school again.  No home learning tasks from Nursery this week – yippee!  Lots of learning through play with friends instead!!

See you soon!