Milngavie Early Years Centre

We are now into our final term and we are looking forward to some exciting events:

Sports Day is on Friday 24th June.  This year we are going to try having our Sports Day up on the football pitch to allow parents a better view of their wee sports star in action!

Morning Session Sports will start at 10.45am and finish by 11.30am.

Afternoon Session Sports will start at 3.15pm and finish by 4pm.

Please could the parents of our all day children let us know if they intend to come and watch, and, if so, which session they will be coming along to.

As usual we will be having a mums and dad’s race –  this year we are giving you plenty of notice so the trainers can be dusted off and serious training can begin over the holiday weekend 😉

Our Pre-school Graduations will be taking place in the Gym of our Infant School this year.  Everyone is welcome and there will no limit to the amount of tickets each family can have.  Tickets will be available nearer the event.

The Blue, Yellow and Green Groups’ Graduation Day is Monday 20th June.  The Red and Orange Groups’ Graduation Day is Tuesday 21st June.  Both graduations will be in the morning at 11.00.  Afternoon Pre-schoolers are of course included and invited to attend too.   The children are going to make special invitations for their families and these will come home at the beginning of June.

Please could you let us know ASAP whether your child (and yourself) are coming on the trip to Briarlands Farm on 1 June.  We have to book the buses by next week and we must have final numbers of those going.  Please advise us whether or not you are coming, so we don’t leave anyone out!

Many thanks!

 This afternoon Jamie and Eddie discovered some special oil race sensory play toys that lit up rather well on the light box.  They called it a blob race and had great fun, both claiming to be the winner!

…..and we really did have snow today!  A bit of a whiteout for 5 minutes this afternoon.  Enough snow in fact, to wash away Maureen’s beautifully crafted chalk road and car park from the surface of the playground!  It didn’t interupt our play though – in fact lots of us saw it and rushed for our coats!

This is Ian’s second week in nursery and already he’s painting like an Old Master!  This is for his mum because, “Mum likes pink!”

Yesterday Murray asked Valerie what she was doing, as she staggered out of the front door carrying a big bag of compost.  Valerie explained she was going to replant one of the plants which looked as though it needed a bigger pot- Valerie asked if he would like to help.  Murray’s mum told Valerie that Murray was a great gardener as he always helps his grandpa in his garden.

Today Valerie and Murray set about the replanting.  First they had to carefully pull the pot off the Clematis – it was definitely a 2 person job!  The roots were really tightly grown in the pot.

Murray helped Valerie put the plant into its new pot and cover its roots with compost – they had to be careful as the Clematis is a climbing plant and it had already attached itself to the railings.

  They finished off by watering the plant – it was looking a lot happier in its new pot!  We are going to watch and see how well it grows over the next few months – it has already got lovely flowers on it!

  This morning we had a road and car park out in our playground.  We had good fun parking our bikes and cars in the numbered spaces and enjoying the retro priced petrol – 20p a litre at the pump! 

We signed our name on the board if we wanted a turn on the bike and Maureen had a suggestions board for things we might want to add to our play.  Ailsa thought traffic lights would be good.  Ewan said a car wash, with soap and water, towels and buckets! Sam thought it would be great to have bike races.  Murray thought a lot:  Measuring tapes, more phones and somewhere to buy stuff – like a shop!  “Yeah!”- said Max – “Somewhere to buy bike oil!”  Struan wants more watering cans!  Maureen wrote all these down on sticky notes and we put them on the suggestions board.

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We also had a garage for mechanics to fix cars and bikes….

and clipboards and pens to design funky vehicles, with some books to give us some ideas!

In the Discovery Zone Cate showed Kate that she could count and recognise numbers all the way up to 20 – even though she is only 3.  We also had some numbers on the light box too!

  Beathan did a great piece of problem solving at the sand tray – one of the tubes was full of sand.  Anne – one of our visitors -talked to Beathan as he worked out what the problem was.  It turned out to be quite tricky – there were glass beads stuck in the pipe- and he had to remove a lot of the sand before he discovered them.  He worked carefully to sort it out and did it all by himself!  Great work Beathan!

“I went to Oban with Mummy, Granny and Jenna. We stayed in a caravan. I liked the beds best because they had circle pillows. We went on a ferry to Balamory. The houses were all different colours. The pink one was the shop. The black one was Miss Jumpie’s. It was fun and I had ice cream”

Rowan drew an amazing picture of her holiday and told us all about it for her learning journey.  What an amazing drawing – we’re thinking of sending it to the tourist board as an advert!

Emily made an ipad out of tap a shape!

Riccardo and Iris drew wonderful pictures of a flower growing and wrote all the names of each part of the plant!

Fabulous writing!

Lynn had a great game of picture dominoes going on in the nursery hall.

Ewan celebrated his 5th birthday in Nursery today – the big day was yesterday!  The birthday postman came and brought him a book about bees.

   The first charity shop we found was Shelter.  Unfortunately it was closed so we had a look in the window at what was for sale.  Julie explained that charity shops sell all sorts of things, and that people take things in when they have finished using them, to be sold to raise money for the charity.   We went into Barnardo’s .  The lady behind the counter- Heather- told us that people from Milngavie and Bearsden brought things in to donate to the shop.  The shop then sells the things.  The Barnardo’s shop uses the money it makes to help poor children or children who have had a hard time in their lives.  We bought a book for our forthcoming Pirate Adventure in Barnardo’s.

 Then we went to the Oxfam shop where the gentleman behind the counter, John, told us all about some of the work that Oxfam do.  He told us that people in hot parts of the world sometimes get bitten by flies called mosquitos which can cause them to get a horrible disease called malaria.  Oxfam give a lot of money to buy big nets for people to sleep underneath so the mosquitos can’t get at them. He also told us something quite amazing- that in some parts of the world people don’t have toilets, and that Oxfam send money for toilets to be built for people to use.  “Where would you go for a pee if you don’t have a toilet?” asked Emily.  We all had a think and then decided you would probably go behind a bush!  We saw lots of interesting things in the Oxfam and Barnardo’s shops and we are all going home to see if we have anything we don’t use any more which we could donate to make some money for charity.