Nursery News 26th June 2023

NURSERY NEWS
Monday 26th June 2023 – Edition 302
Find out About:

A.Review of the Year
B.We are running very short of tissues……
C. A reminder: Open School Event: For Big Nursery Yellow Group Parents: Basic Skills.
D. What are the children learning about this week?
E. Central Bedfordshire Council Demand for early years childcare Survey 2023– Consultation with parents and carers of 0 – 5 year olds

A. Review of the year

At this time of year, we carry out a big review of our school. In the last few days Miss Howe and Mrs Cashmore have been talking to the Big Nursery children individually, to gain their views about their school, with regard to what they like, what they think they have learned and what they would like to see change. All school staff and Governors are busy filling in questionnaires too.
This information helps us to plan our areas for development next year. I always ask parents for their views too at this time of year.
We usually ask just two questions:
1. Please comment about what we do well at Willow.
2. Please tell us one thing you would like to see at Willow that you would consider to be an improvement and/or development.

Please write a short email and send to office@willownursery.co.uk

Covid had a big impact at Willow, particularly on our ability to invite parents in to our school. During this past academic year we have been keen to re-establish our program of events where parents are invited in to school. This has been a focus of our School Development Plan So, with this in mind I would like you as parents to share with us your responses to a third question:

3. Have you any ideas regarding how parents could feel more involved with the school?

If you wish your comments to inform my review, please send your email by the end of this week, Friday 30th June. I will then compile all the comments and respond to
them in a future newsletter, on Monday 10th July.

B.We are running very short of tissues……
We are running very short of tissues. Children seem to have colds year round, plus some children suffer from hay fever. We would be grateful for donations of tissues.

C. A reminder: Open School Event: For Big Nursery Yellow Group Parents: Basic Skills.
Miss Howe’s Yellow group parents have been invited in to observe a 30 minute reading/writing activity on Wednesday 28th June.
Mrs Cashmore’s Yellow group parents have been invited in to observe a 30 minute reading/writing activity on Thursday 29th June.

D. What are the children learning about this week?
The theme in Little Nursery is sports skills In Catkins Mrs McGrath will set up an obstacle course for the children to navigate. They will be encouraged to jump and crawl over different obstacles as well as throw bean bags into specific areas. Mrs McGrath will model how the children should move safely around the course and praise them for using their listening ears.
Outside, Miss Gaffney will be holding a race day for the children. There will be a space for friends to sit and watch the competitions. The children will be encouraged to take part in an egg and spoon race, a sack race and a beanbag balancing race. All children will be cheered on for trying their best and Miss Gaffney will explain the importance of taking part and good sportsmanship.
In the link, Mrs Brinkley will be helping the children to create medals for each other. She will talk to them about the numbers on their medals and that they represent 1st 2nd and 3rd place in competitions. She will be working with children to practice reciting numbers 1-5 and further.
In Room 3, Mrs Watson will be sharing a group read called ‘Maisy Goes Swimming’. She will show the children that we read from left to right and also name the different parts of a book. Mrs Watson will encourage the children to share their own swimming experiences after the story.

The theme in Big Nursery is transport – land
In Room 1, Miss Skai will support the children with making number trains. They will cut out and order train carriages with the numerals 1-5 and 1-10 on them. Once the pictures have been correctly ordered, the children will stick them down to make a train picture. Miss Skai will also have a group read of the ‘Big Red Bus’, which she will share with the children.

In Room 2, Miss Howe will be showing the children how to make buses with moving wheels. The children will revisit their recently acquired skills of using split pins, these will enable the wheels on the bus pictures to turn around. Mrs Cashmore will set up a table with paint and toy vehicles, she will model how to dip the wheels of the vehicles in paint and push them along paper to make marks. The children will be encouraged to observe the marks made by the wheels and discuss the difference between using toys to paint rather than traditional paintbrushes.

Outside, Mrs Patterson will set up water canals for the children to investigate. She will encourage the children to take turns and play sensibly with the water so that the boats can move along the waterways. She will also provide milk crates to support imaginative play. Mrs Patterson will suggest vehicles that can be made with the crates, such as cars and trains. The children can then use their imagination to travel anywhere they want to in their crate vehicles.

E. We have had a request from Central Bedfordshire Council to forward a survey to our parents: see below:
Central Bedfordshire Council
Demand for early years childcare Survey 2023 –Consultation with parents and carers of 0 – 5 year olds
The government is considering providing a set number of hours of free funded childcare for children aged 9 months to 2 years. In Central Bedfordshire we will need to make sure that we have enough places in early years settings (including pre-schools, day nurseries and childminders) to meet the demand. We want parents/carers to let us know if you are planning to use formal
childcare for your children in the future. We also want to know if a set number of funded hours would influence your decision around when your child might start attending childcare and also
how many hours a week they spend in childcare. In line with the 2018 Data Protection Act and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), all of the information that you feedback will be kept in
the strictest confidence and will be used only for the purposes of this research. No personal testimony will be used and you do not have to give us your name or any children’s names. We would be grateful if you could kindly complete this survey before Friday 7th July 2023.

If you have any questions or would like any further information about the
purpose of this survey, please contact:
The Early Years Team at: Earlyyears@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk
Your help with this survey is much appreciated.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CBCchildcaredemandsurvey2023