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Nursery News 24th January 2022

NURSERY NEWS

24^th January 2022 – Edition 249

A. Find out About Parent Consultations for Big Nursery

B. Letters for Catkins children starting Big Nursery in September 2022.

C. Big Nursery Blue group begin Forest Schools

D. Mrs Davies Absence

E. What the children are learning about this week

A. Parent consultations for Big Nursery

We plan to offer Parent Consultations (on the telephone) to parents of children in Big Nursery during the week beginning 7/2/22. Big Nursery staff will contact parents, either at the front gate at the beginning or end of sessions, or by telephone to arrange a suitable appointment time. Appointments will last no longer than 10 minutes.

B. Letters for Catkins children starting Big Nursery in September 2022.

If your child is in Catkins Class, in Little Nursery, with a date of birth between 01/04/19 and 31/08/19 they will be eligible for their universal funded 15 hours in September 2022. Some families are entitled to 30 hours of funded nursery education if both parents are working. All children in this date of birth group will begin Big Nursery in September 2022. Mrs Davies will be passing out letters to parents this week, with information and forms to complete. Parents will have a choice of attendance options. Please fill in the forms and return these to the school office as soon as possible,  by the 2^nd February at the very latest.

 C. Big Nursery Blue group begin Forest Schools.

Last week, Blue group began their program of Forest School activities. Mrs Brinkley leads the Forest School work and she explained to the group that they will be having a Forest School activity group every Wednesday at 9:00am, for the next 7 school weeks. One of the boys was a little concerned that this involved going off site, but Mrs Brinkley reassured him that all the activities would take place in the Catkins garden.

Big Nursery Orange group completed their Forest School tasks last term, and Big Nursery Yellow group will have their turn in the Summer Term.

D. Mrs Davies Absence

Mrs Davies is currently unwell. In her absence, Miss Howe will be taking over the running of the nursery school.

E. What the children are learning about this week:

The theme in little nursery this week is the shoe shop.

In Catkins, the staff will set up a shoe shop role play area. This gives the children a great opportunity to role play as a shopkeeper and customer while building on the children’s language and communication skills. Mrs. Brinkley will help the children get creative by using paint to create colourful footprint pictures.

In room 3, Mrs. Watson will have lots of old shoes for the children to decorate with a range of artistic resources. They will then be using their newly decorated shoes to practice drawing skills, the children will draw around their shoes and colour in the shoeprints that they have made.

Miss Gaffney will be planting daffodils in the garden with the children and talking about how the bulbs will change as they grow.

The theme in big nursery is people who help us / fire and police services.

In room 1, Mrs. Patterson will have the police and fire service role play area set up for the children to use. The children can use their imagination to become police officers or fire fighters. This will show that the children understand different occupations and the responsibilities of people in the community.

In room 2, Mrs Howe will be supporting the children with expressing their emotions through painting while listening to music. Miss Howe will encourage the children to think about which colours might express happy/sad or angry feelings and use these in their artwork.

Mrs Cashmore will support the children with building a dialogue while playing. They will do this by making their own walkie talkies and using these to role play as police officers and fire fighters. The activities in room 2, will support the children with different ways of communicating and expressing their feelings.

Outside, the children will be able to undertake some responsibilities of a fire fighter, such as rescuing kittens from trees. They will have different outfits and accessories to utilise, to immerse them in their role play.

Nursery News 17.1.2022

NURSERY NEWS

17th January 2022 – Edition 248

Find out About

A. Thank you for your Patience….

B. Parent Consultations for Little Nursery.

C.Being on time.

D. What the children are learning about this week?

A. Thank you for your Patience….

Thank you to all parents for your understanding last week, when I had to make the difficult decision to close the school. We as a staff team had just been overwhelmed by Covid. Five staff, including myself tested positive for Covid 19 over the Christmas break. I tested positive on the day I was due to get my booster, so I did spend most of the Christmas break feeling pretty unwell. I don’t mind sharing about myself, but as for the other staff, this information should be kept confidential.

However of those 5 staff, 3 of us were still quite unwell by the time we were due to return, even though we had completed our 10 day isolation. On return 3 further staff tested positive for covid on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th . Staff were still unwell not able to come back and further staff were going off sick. We have strict adult to child ratios which we must adhere to: 1:13 adults to children when a teacher is on duty, and 1:8 when a teacher is not on duty.

Saturday 8th I received notification that another member of staff had tested positive.

We did not have enough staff to open safely. The staff that were available had also been close contacts to those who were now isolating.

I felt the school needed to close, to reboot, to get well. My plan was that it we closed completely for this short period then we should be able to open fully again and look after all children. The firebreak would stop staff transmission.

It was completely the correct decision. Some of us are still not ‘right’ bet we are all here pulling together to provide the best education we can for our children during this pandemic.

As I write this letter on Monday 17th January, all staff are present.

B. Parent consultations for Little Nursery

We plan to offer Parent Consultations (on the telephone) to parents of children in Little Nursery during the week beginning 31/01/22. Catkins staff will contact parents, either at the front gate at the beginning or end of sessions, or by telephone to arrange a suitable appointment time. Appointments will last no longer than 5 minutes.

Parent Consultations for Big Nursery children will follow later in the term: more details next week.

C. Being on time.

We are finding that more and more parents are arriving late in the mornings and this is becoming increasingly disruptive to the registration routines of the staff and the children.

We have well established drop off and collection routines. If parents arrive on time then we can all be safely inside by 8:55am.

We expect Little Nursery to arrive for 8:45am and Big Nursery to arrive at 8:50am.

What happens at this time?

Keyworkers greet their children, enter nursery altogether, then go to the cloakrooms to hang up their belongings and wash their hands. Each keyworker group then gathers to have the register taken. In Big Nursery we have a very important part of the children’s learning in those first five minutes or so. Each week we use direct teaching to expand the children’s vocabulary or knowledge. We use flashcards or real objects to teach them something new. We drip feed the vocabulary/concept to the children every day for a week. Staff tailor the task to the ability of the children in their group, for example the oldest children can describe a 3D shape using mathematically correct terms, whereas the youngest children describe 3D shapes using everyday language such as ‘ball’ or ‘box’. We aim to stretch everybody. We have pre planned these themes to teach every week across the year, this week we have been learning to describe patterns and next week we are exploring vocabulary to do with our classroom focus of ‘At the Vets’. We have looked at colours, positional language, seasons, days of the week.

As we begin our day, and the children arrive, classroom staff are working directly with the children. It is disruptive if a Little Nursery practitioner has to leave the group they are settling to come back to the front entrance 2,3,or 4 times for individual children.

By 8:55am all classroom staff are with their children, and all children should be in. I know some parents are dropping brothers and sisters to school on the opposite side of town, and parents have told me when they first enrolled their child that they will be regularly late every day. We accept this. We also accept that even with our local schools of Hadrian Academy and Vale Academy that parents with older children cannot be in two places at once. However we are finding the number of pupils arriving late is growing, and we know some of these children are the only child in the family!

I know parents might feel it is easier to arrive late and drop their child straight in at the front door, but it is myself , the Headteacher or the office staff who are tasked with dealing with late arrivals , and we have our own important tasks to be getting on with. We expect 1 or 2 late arrivals, which I guess those parents who arrive late

would see 1 or 2 other families arriving late. On some days we have had 10 or 15 families arriving late, and sometimes arriving as late as 9:25am.

With each late arrival I have to take the child to the correct classroom, ensure their belongings are stored correctly add them to the register, add them to the lunch register, change the totals on the wall… how long does this take? Two minutes each child? 3 minutes?

Please help us by arriving on time, so the staff can begin all the fun activities we have planned for the children, without interruption.

D. What the children are learning about this week,

The theme in Little Nursery this week is sharing experiences.

In Catkins the children will be learning how to communicate through signing. The signs will help all children, especially those with little speech or English as a second language, to communicate with peers and adults. The program that staff will use, introduces two dolls named Zak and Zoe. Zak and Zoe will help the children to express their emotions using basic sign language.

In Little Nursery, the children will take part in a shared read of Maisy dresses up. They will be practising their ball skills outside with the basketball and football nets and in the link area they will be learning about mixing colours.

The theme in Big Nursery is people who help us – ‘At the Vets’.

In room 1 there will be a Vets Practice set up for the children to role play in as a Vet and look after the animals. Mrs. Patterson will have a variety of soft toy animals that the children can play with and take care of. This is a great opportunity for the children to share their own experiences with animals, be it at the farm, zoo or their pets at home.

In Room 2, Miss Skai will have a selection of resources such as the water tray, play dough and box modelling area for the children to investigate. There is always an area for the children to sing, dance and play instruments. Our musical corner is very popular and provides a great boost to the children’s confidence because they are allowed to be as creative and expressive as possible.

Outside, the children will be creating animal collages with natural resources, they will choose an animal and use glue to fill in a silhouette with leaves, twigs and grass etc. There will be the chance for children to experiment with symbols and mark making as Miss Howe teaches them how to create a tally chart. The children will hunt for

pictures of different animals throughout the garden, then they will be shown how to count their animals using a tally chart. The children will also be encouraged to use positional language to tell the adults where they have found each animal.

Willow Nursery Reopening

Dear Parent/Carer,

Willow Nursery School will be fully open from Thursday 13^th January. Thank you for your understanding and patience at this time.  Mrs Davies has spoken at length with Central Bedfordshire Public Health Advisory Team. They are totally satisfied that all cases within the school are community related. They also recognise that we had no other choice but to close the school to keep everyone safe. The finance staff will ensure that all monies will be refunded or rolled forward for people who pay for their child’s sessions.

Mrs Leigh Davies

Willow Nursery Temporary Closure

Nursery News 4th January 2022

NURSERY NEWS

4th January 2022 – Edition 247

Find out About

A. Important Reminder for Big Nursery Children: Deadline for Local Authority Applications for Primary Schools.

B. Term Dates.

C What the children are learning about this week?

A. Important Reminder for Big Nursery Children: Deadline for Local Authority Applications for Primary Schools- 15th January 2022.

Parents of all children in Big Nursery must apply to their Local Authority for a place in their chosen primary school by 15th January 2022. Make sure that you do this! We always have at least one parent each year who fails to apply, and their child is not allocated a Primary school place.

B. Term Dates.

We follow the term dates set by Central Bedfordshire Council. If you look on the Central Bedfordshire Council website you can find school term dates. School term dates can sometimes be changed by the Local Authority, so I do not put more than the current terms dates in my newsletter. If you are planning to book a holiday, always check the Central Bedfordshire website for most up to date school holiday dates.

So for this term: Spring term 2022:

Term Begins Tuesday 4th January 2022.

Half Term holiday is from Monday 14th February to Friday 18th February

The last day of the Spring Term is Friday 1st April.

Within this term we plan to offer all parents a Parent Consultation. These are likely to be at the beginning of February. I will advise of specific dates nearer the time.

C. What the children are learning about this week?

The theme in Little Nursery this week is sharing experiences.

In Catkins and Room 3 the children will be talking about what they have been doing at home over the festive period. The children will be drawing pictures of their Christmas activities and any gifts that they received. Staff will talk with them as they draw and ‘write’ encouraging them to discuss what they have drawn.

There will be an obstacle course set up outside by Mrs. Brinkley, and in the link area, Mrs. Watson will be looking at different painting techniques. The children will be using balloons and string dipped in paint to create some amazing artwork.

The theme in Big Nursery is people who help us / postal workers.

There will be a role play area set up in Room 1, where the children can role play being a postal worker, they will carry out tasks such as sorting and posting letters and parcels. The children will also listen to a story called ‘Letter’s from Maisy’ and will have the opportunity to write and post their own letters.

In Room 2, Mrs. Patterson will help to children to make and paint their own post boxes. She will also encourage the children to explore colour mixing by painting their hands and feet with different colours and looking at the changes that happen if the colours are blended together.

Outside, Miss Skai will turn all the bicycles into delivery vehicles. She will have delivery destinations set up around the playground and ask the children to deliver their parcels to each area.