Milngavie Early Years Centre

 We visited Tesco to do our snack shopping.  Here we are examining the fruit counter.

  The pancakes we like were on the very top shelves!

We walked down beside the river, past Gavins Mill, over a bridge we thought a troll might live in, and all the way to the sandy park.  It was great fun and we all enjoyed being out and about and seeing our local environment.  We had another look at the shop names on the way back  and more of us could identify them this week thanks to work done in the art area with Maureen.  The nice man in Tesco gave us a bag of treats to take back to Nursery.

We all ran up the hill when we got to the sandy park!

We really enjoyed playing on the play equipment there!  Some of it was a real challenge- Elisabeth bravely climbed up the climbing frame to rescue someone who got stuck! A real star!

What a good afternoon!

 The Scottish Government and Road Safety Scotland are providing early years children with FREE road safety “Go Safe with Ziggy” books for home.  They tie in well with our safety awareness this term and we will read them in nursery too!

Our wee ones will receive “Ziggy Goes Zab-a Ding-a-Wheeeeeee and the Pre-school children will receive “Ziggy’s Sunny Holiday”.

These will be sent home this week!  Happy bedtime reading!

In our 2 stars and a wish last month, the children asked to be more involved in developing the garden.  We are particularly interested in wildlife so Lynn brought in some pallets and pipes for us to construct a bug hotel to attract bugs and beasties to our garden.   We are hoping to create a habitat for lots of different insects and creatures , so we can watch them when we are in the garden.

We had to work together to lift the pallets into place. They were very heavy!

Next we put some pipes inside the gaps in the pallets – beasties like dark places to hide and these will be perfect!

More pipes on top!  We are really enjoying the construction and thinking of all the different natural materials we can put in the hotel to make our little insect guests feel pampered and special.  A few wood lice were showing a bit of an interest in moving in already so we think it is looking good.  If anyone has any spare straw, bamboo canes, air bricks or terracotta plant pots or any other natural materials we would be very pleased to add them to our hotel.  Also -if you have any good ideas for enticing in bugs, please give staff your suggestions or leave a comment!  We’ll keep you updated on the big build and the clientele we attract!

On Wednesday we went out into the garden for a Safe and Dangerous Hunt – we were looking for dangerous things in our garden – these included sharp knives, chainsaws, broken glass and poisons.  Don’t worry – we just put pictures of these around the garden!!! There were some safe things too, and we had to work out if the picture we found was dangerous or safe. We sorted them into- red basket for danger and  green one for safe things and talked about what we would do if we found the real thing.  Many of the children were already aware that red is the colour for danger and that signs with red round them are warning signs.

Maureen has found a fun use for our magnetic easel.  Following up on our maths fest last week she has been setting challenging sums and the children have been using magnetic squares to work them out.  We have bought a fabulous big leopardskin calculator to help us check our answers.  We love maths!

Please help us improve our Nursery by telling us what you think!

The traditional nursery rhyme for March is Humpty Dumpty.  We thought an eggy one was appropriate because Easter is fast approaching.

This month we would like to ask for 2 stars and a wish on our method of recording your child’s learning –their LEARNING JOURNEY – 2 things you like and one thing you would like to see us do, or do differently.

If you could write it on a brick we can build a wall for Humpty Dumpty to sit on, with your suggestions. (Bricks are available on the Humpty display in the Nursery Hall). We will also ask the children on Learning Journey Day and put their opinions on the wall too.  We will use your opinions to help us make policies which reflect parents’ and children’s wishes and plan more effectively for change.

Many thanks!

From your nursery team.

Lauren asked the children what they would like next in our imaginative play area and the resounding reply was a Police Station. Not just any old Police Station though- one with a Jail!  We are going to ask our community police to come and talk to us about their job and perhaps visit the police station in the Main Street. We will be talking about keeping safe,stranger danger and road safety and also thinking about ‘right’ and, ‘wrong’ things to do and why we have laws. It will also give us an excuse to investigate  our finger prints and make Wanted posters! We have a feeling that the police role play may just result in a few arrests of staff members so watch out for us festering in the clink, on a bread and water diet! Please come and visit us and try to negotiate parole – have a look at what we are learning too! 

Monday is a beautiful day and we are really enjoying the sunshine in the playground.  Spring is in the air!

Tuesday – Blue and Orange Groups for gym am.

Wednesday – Homebase – number songs and washing line number sequencing

Thursday- Learning Journey Day – looking at our folders and thinking about what we have learned and what we want to learn about next.

Friday- Weather permitting – planting in the garden.

Innes brought in a very special present to nursery today.  His mum has a friend who actually owns a working water mill in Golspie, and she gave us a special bag of Peasmeal or Brosemeal – made from yellow peas ground in the mill.  Innes also brought a recipe for Peasmeal Bannocks his mum had written out specially.  We are going to make them in Nursery next week!  There is  even a picture of the watermill on the front of the flour bag! Many thanks Innes!