Milngavie Early Years Centre

This week in nursery we are having at a look at our hands.  Educational research has shown that it is very important to develop both gross motor skills and fine motor skills in order to write.  Boys particularly, need real emphasis on the gross motor skills, allowing the muscles in the upper body, arms and shoulders to strengthen, in order to be able to grip a pen or pencil, without it feeling a chore.  Islington Council in London published a document about writing in the Early years which we read with interest.  http://www.islington.gov.uk/publicrecords/library/Education-and-skills/Information/Guidance/2012-2013/(2012-11-20)-Handwriting-guidance-final.pdf.

We are going to be doing lots of fun things which exercise the muscles in the arms, hands and fingers this week.  We are going to be doing some finger dancing at home base time and playing “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, turn it round and there’s the people.”  Baking, with lots of rubbing together of ingredients is also planned and we will be strengthening our pincer grips using tweezers for sorting activities, and tongs to serve our snack.

Our malleable table will have opportunities to manipulate a variety  different textured materials : playdough, clay, plasticine etc.

Julie and Angela found some great Water Guns on their shopping expedition to the village last week and the children {and the staff} are really looking forward to using them on some number targets in the garden and playground this week.

Pam is continuing her Senses experiments and wall display with the children this week and Lauren is helping the children create an exciting Reading Jungle, learning about animals on the way!  Susan Tighe is going to do The Jungle, a special music session on Friday to bring another dimension to our learning.

It is looking like another exciting week in Milngavie Nursery!

Wow – the dinosaur eggs are hatching!

Susan brought Daisy the Dinosaur to visit today.  She brought coconut shells which we played, then we imagined they were dinosaur eggs and became dinosaurs which hatched out and roamed the nursery.  All this and amazing music!  We love Snappy Sounds!

This morning Julie and Angela took 8 children down to the village.  First they visited  Graeme’s Pharmacy, where Graham, the pharmacist gave them lots of different sizes of pill boxes, medicine bottles and measuring spoons and syringes.  Maureen is going to use these for investigating measure in the doctors surgery next week.

Next they visited Poundstretcher where they got an amazing bargain of 4 water blaster guns and 4 water pistols- just the thing for the number target practice in the garden.

Then they went to the Post Office and were invited in to see the sorting office.  They took a great picture of a bear, that the sorting office staff said watched them to make sure they were doing their work.  Pictures to follow – our computer is not wanting to co-operate at all this morning!

This morning Valerie took our pupil council superheroes, May and Fred, to their very first Milngavie Primary Infant Pupil Council.  The council is made up of representatives (superheroes) from Nursery to P3.  Today’s agenda included , the playground and container, working together to make our garden a lovely place and how we can help the nursery children coming to Primary 1 in August feel at home.  May and Fred enjoyed the experience and particularly liked singing the “Co-operation” Song at the end of the meeting. As did Valerie who thinks we should sing it at all our staff meetings in future!

Valerie ordered a new wood working bench for us and it arrived today.  The children helped unpack it and put it together.  It is very solid and it has a mini vice for holding the wood.  Once it was assembled we just had to try it out.  We put some wood in the vice and practised hammering nails with the claw hammer, and sawing with a hacksaw.     

Look out for some top class carpentry!

Lynn has been encouraging the children to paint some of the things we are learning about in our bodies theme.  The paintings are brilliant and Lynn has put up the children’s comments beside them.  The doctor looks particularly gorgeous with her red lipstick on.  Please come and see them in our Creativity Zone.

VERY EXCITING NEWS!      

In January we applied to Tesco Bags of Help Scheme with a proposal to create an orchard on the waste ground between the nursery and the football pitch.  Tesco fund this scheme to help local communities, with all the money raised by the 5p charge on bags.  The criteria for the grant involved improving a piece of ground in the local area.

There were nearly 5,000 appplicants for the scheme and WE HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE A GRANT!

Our project, along with the other two successful projects in our region, will go forward to a public vote in Tesco stores with their customers deciding the outcome. The project with the highest public vote will receive £12,000, the second placed project £10,000 and the third placed project £8,000.

The public will be able to vote for their favourite project in local Tesco stores from Saturday 27th February 2016 until Sunday 6th March 2016 and Tesco will notify us by the end of March to confirm the amount of our grant award.
So – we are looking to mount a huge, local publicity campaign.   An orchard would give us an even better outdoor learning environment – a place to grow all kinds of organic fruit for snack and playtime, encourage wildlife, give opportunities for school enterprise.  It would be a beautiful place to relax, picnic and play, as well as learn.  It would also put us on the map as the first school in East Dunbartonshire with its very own orchard!

If we can convince enough people in the local area to vote for us in their Tesco’s stores in the week beginning 27^th February – we believe we could win the top grant of £12,000!

If you would like to help us with our advertising campaign please contact milngavieprimaryorchard2016@gmail.com.  We need good ideas and, as much help as possible!  Once we know whether we have £8,000, £10,000 or £12,000 we can work out exactly what we can afford to do.  If you know any local businesses that might be interested in helping us, please let us know.  The children are going to be involved in managing this exciting project from the start, and will be actively involved in preparing the publicity campaign.  If you would give consent for your child’s photo appearing on publicity material, please complete the attached slip.

We are on our way to creating a fabulous new outdoor learning area for our school and helping make our planet a more beautiful place.  PLEASE SUPPORT US AND TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO VOTE FOR OUR ORCHARD IN TESCO.

Many thanks

Elisabeth, an eagle eyed shopper, spotted these jigsaws in Lidl for £3.99 each.  There is a boy and a girl version and underneath the top layer with clothes are 4 other layers finishing with the skeleton.  She brought them in to nursery this morning and they were in constant use all day.  If you are looking for them, they are in the middle aisle at Lidl.

Yesterday Angela noticed that the children were really enjoying playing with the syringes from the doctors surgery in the water tray.  They loved filling them up and skooshing them out again- a few wee people got very wet as some could not resist the temptation to squirt each other, or aim the syringes up in the air and create a fountain!

Angela, who is our outdoor person just now,  cleverly saw an opportunity to provide target practice and encourage !number recognition.  Taking the syringes outside, with some big buckets of water- she created a water shooting gallery.  It was amazing fun!

The children found that the big  syringes were quite difficult to aim accurately.  “We could buy some water guns!” said one wee person.  Great idea – WATCH THIS SPACE!