Nursery News 13th January 2025

NURSERY NEWS

13th January 2025 – Edition 357- First Newsletter of 2025

Find out About

A. Welcome back after the Christmas Break.

B. Final reminder-Big Nursery-Applying for Primary School.

C. School Term Dates

D. Labelling belongings

E. What the children are learning about this week?

 

A. Welcome back after the Christmas Break.

We hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas Break. Our pupil numbers grow each term as the academic year progresses, so please try to arrive on time, so we can take everyone safely inside in an organised way as swiftly as possible.

 

So, as a reminder, Little Nursery Should arrive for 8:45 and Big Nursery should arrive for 8:50. If you arrive late, please be patient, we will admit all those children who arrive on time first, and then come back to admit latecomers. We do understand that parents cannot be in two places at once if you have to drop off older brothers and sisters at other schools.

 

B. Final reminder-Big Nursery-Applying for Primary School.

Who needs to apply?

Children born between 1 September 2020 and 31 August 2021 are due to start Primary school in September 2025.

You need to apply before 15 January 2025.

How to apply

  • if Central Bedfordshire is your council, you need to apply through them.
  • if Central Bedfordshire is not your council, you’ll need to apply through your home Local Authority.

You will need to look on your Local Authority Council’s website for further information on how to apply.

 

C: School Term Dates

The Local Authority, Central Bedfordshire, publishes details of term dates and school holidays on their website: Centralbedfordshire.gov.uk

Type: ‘School term and holiday dates in Central Bedfordshire’ into your search engine to find the correct page.

We are a Local Authority School, and as such we follow the Local Authority term dates.

However, for the academic year 2024-2025 the Local Authority did not set the 5 training days when the school is closed for staff training. Schools were advised to choose our 5 training days.

Monday 2nd September 2024.

Tuesday 3rd September 2024.

Monday 4th November 2024

Monday 6th January 2025

Four of our training days have now been completed. Our last training day in this academic year is:

Monday 7th July 2025.

We have put Willow Nursery School dates for the 2024-2025 academic year on our website willownursery.co.uk on the ‘Calendar’ tab.

The Central Bedfordshire website has published dates for academic year 2025-2026. The academic calendar for 2025-2026 does not show when schools are closed for 5 training days. We have not made our decision yet as to when to schedule these training dates. When we have made our decision, the term dates for academic calendar 2025-2026 will appear on our website.

 

D: Labelling belongings

Label all lunchboxes clearly with your child’s name, on the top, so staff can see the name when the box is on the trolley. Label all drinks bottles and containers.

Label all coats and shoes, and any other items that children can take off-cardigans/jumpers/ fleeces. It is much easier to return items to owners when things are labelled.

Two, three and four year olds are not yet reliable when it comes to hanging up their coats, hats and scarves. Our cloakrooms are scattered with children’s belongings by the middle of the session. We do our best to keep belongings with the correct child, but it would be incredibly helpful if parents could name items, especially coats, as this is a time when children often begin to wear heavier winter coats. We do not need fancy nametags, just consider putting your child’s name (or initials), in biro, on the manufacturers label.

 

E. What the children are learning about this week?

The theme this week is Goldilocks and the Three Bears

In the Nursery this week the children will listen to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There will be a role play area set up for the children to explore and act out the story. They will have the chance to dress up, pretend to eat porridge, sit in the chairs and lie down in the three beds. This will give the children a wonderful opportunity to build their confidence as they join others in play and recite memorable lines from the book.

In the Creative area, children will be encouraged to paint portraits of the characters from this story. They can choose to use character templates or to free paint using colours and styles of their own choice. The work that children produce on this topic will be showcased on the display board in Room 2, we aim to use work from children in each age group.

There are lots of variations on this story and staff will talk to the children about different endings they may have read about. They will also discuss the language of size from the book and encourage the children to think about why the characters each have different sized objects. Staff will ask the children about their own opinions on issues in the story, for example ‘would you like it if somebody ate all your porridge?’. This is a lovely way to really inspire the children to think about the feelings of other people and how our actions impact upon them.

The younger children will have a tough tray filled with porridge, spoons and bowls. They can build on their hand eye coordination as they fill and empty bowls, using big, medium and small spoons. They will be able to try their hand at painting their own bear characters from the story and have a smaller scale role play area in the classroom. Staff will help children to put on Bear hats and Bear Paw mittens so that they look like the bears from the book.