Nursery News 14th June 2021

NURSERY NEWS

14th June 2021 – Edition 228

Find out About:

A..Is your child ready to learn?

B. Keeping Children Safe in the Heat

C. What the children are learning about this week:

D.End of Term arrangements July 2021

A. Is your child ready to learn?

One tick from ‘the sixteen ticks’ to work upon:

To talk in sentences and use an extending vocabulary.

Do you listen to your child and model appropriate speech and conversation when talking to them? Do you share new words with your child and explain what they mean?

Children absorb so much about language from what they hear around them. The average 3 year old knows 200 words. By the age of 4 this increases to around 1500 words. We talk to the children all day long at Nursery, about what we are doing and what they are doing, giving them the vocabulary to describe their experiences.

B. Keeping Children Safe in the Heat.

We are now moving into the last part of the school year. Summer brings it’s challenges, one of which is keeping the children hydrated. The children should all have their own water bottles and we remind the children to drink frequently. All children are offered a carton of milk at snacktime. We would like to ask all parents to donate a box of ice pops. We have a freezer in the classroom. When it is very hot we can then ask all the children to sit quietly in the shade or inside for a few minutes, to have a break from the sun and eat their ice pops. This has worked very well in past years. The children enjoy the treat.

C.What the children are learning about this week:

In the Main Nursery Bubble, we will be exploring another classic storybook ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’

Mrs Patterson creates an adventure in the classroom! In the story the children walk through all different environments, short grass, long grass, thick oozy mud, a river, a snow storm. Mrs Patterson creates a trail around the classroom, so the children can explore all these different textures. At the end of the story the children find a big dark cave, and peep inside…. Mrs Patterson builds a big dark tent to represent the cave, and maybe the children will find a bear inside!

Miss Howe will organise a bear hunt in the garden, moving around with the children looking for different illustrations from the story hidden in the trees and bushes. The children will then retell relevant parts of the story at each stop. Miss Skai, working in the Art area will help children to make some binoculars and maps to help them on their bear hunt! We are running very low on tubes and boxes in our box modelling area. We would be very grateful for donations of these items.

Miss Howe will also be teaching the children traditional ring games, such as: ‘Isn’t it funny how a bear likes Honey, I wonder why he does, Buzz Buzz!’

The younger Bubble will be having a role play café, organised by Mrs Brinkley. (We have considered Covid carefully when planning, children will only handle their own food, and utensils will not be shared), Children will have the opportunity to prepare and eat sandwiches in the café. Children will also learn about the story of the ‘Tiger who came to tea’, because at the end the story the family eat at a café.

To help keep the children cool, we will be allowing them to play with ice blocks in the water tray. Please remember to keep your child’s bag well stocked with spare clothes as the good weather means we can play with more water activities. The younger the children are, the more likely they are to become very wet.

D. End of Term arrangements July 2021

The last day of term in July 2021 for all children will be Wednesday 21st July.

On Thursday 22nd July school will open only for the Main Nursery children that are leaving us. The session is likely to be a ‘morning only’ session. More details will follow.

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We usually invite new September starters to visit the school for one afternoon visit with their parents during the school day in July. We are not sure if this will be able to happen this year. A lot depends on what the government decides to do with it’s roadmap to reopening. The school has received this advice from Public Health regarding transition days:

Update from Public Health

Transition days

Schools across Central Bedfordshire will already be planning for transition days in the summer term. These days, whilst incredibly valuable for pupils and staff, could increase the risk of transmission of COVID as pupils from multiple settings will be arriving in schools across Central Bedfordshire. We know that, at the moment, we are experiencing the highest rates of cases in school aged children and their families, therefore, minimising any additional risk is really important as the Delta (Indian) variant appears to be more transmissible.

As such, we will be closely monitoring the situation but would advise that you actively plan alternative arrangements for in-person transition days. We hope that as we get closer to the next stage of the national roadmap in mid-June, and when we see how our patterns of infection are changing locally, that we can provide more definite advice about transition days.

So we are waiting to hear.

We may have to use some time at the beginning of the September term for new children and families to visit the school when the school is empty of other pupils.

We have already had some enquiries from existing parents about when children will restart in September. At the moment we are waiting for advice, to enable us to plan transitions.