Nursery News 22nd Nov 2021

NURSERY NEWS

22nd November 2021 – Edition 243

Find out About

A. School Photographer

B. Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Public Holiday 2022

C. Local Visits

D. Box Modelling

E: What are the children learning about this week?

A. School Photographs

The School Photographer has said the photographs parents have ordered should be with the school by Monday 29th November, all going to plan.

B. Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Public Holiday 2022

As you will be aware, an additional bank holiday has been announced for 3rd June 2022 for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

The Department for Education (DfE) has laid regulations to reduce the minimum number of sessions schools are required to meet in the academic year 2021/22 as a result of this additional bank holiday.

Most schools will be on their half term breaks in the week commencing 31 May 2022 and the DfE has advised that schools and councils should observe the Bank Holidays on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd June. In practice, this means that where this additional bank holiday falls during half-term week, schools will be able to identify another day of ‘holiday’ elsewhere in the year on which staff will not be required to work and will be given an equivalent day’s paid leave.

To reflect the additional bank holiday, the School teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) 2021 reflects a change in the number of days that teachers must be available to work under their terms and conditions for this academic year. Teachers will be required to be available to work on one less day for the academic year 2021/22, An extra day of holiday, therefore, will need to be allocated by individual schools.

After discussion with the staff and governors, Willow Nursery School will be closed for an additional days holiday on Monday 27th June 2022.

C. Local Visits

The walks we went on last week were very successful. All the children were very well behaved. Mrs Patterson lead 6 tours of the Local Area. I’m pleased to say that I was able to join her twice. Even I was surprised at the amount of things Mrs Patterson drew the children’s attention to. We met a postman on one of the trips I went on. A couple who were gardening asked us what we were learning about. The community just seemed to like seeing the children out and about. We also discussed how to cross the road safely, and all the children took on board the importance of holding a grown ups hand when crossing the road.

D. Box Modelling

We are running very short of recycled materials for our box modelling area. The children like to have a selection of boxes and other items to glue together to create models. The school provides some items that we buy, for example, lolly sticks, doilies, all colours of tissue paper/ cellophane, paper plates. Mrs Patterson also visits a ‘scrapstore’ once or twice a year, to choose from a selection of industry donated by products that may be of use to organisations. In the past she has sourced paper cups from coffee shops, little plastic pots, small plastic toys, paper and card.

We do need your help!

We would like parents to donate useful, interesting recycled items for our box modelling area.

What we like:

Interesting boxes, not too big. Children like to build on smaller boxes, such as toothpaste boxes, stock cube boxes. The biggest boxes we use are probably cereal packets.

Bottle tops, (Washed please) make great wheels.

Yogurt pots, margarine tubs and other other small plastic containers.

Toilet roll tubes are very versatile.

What we do not like:

Plastic bottles- children cannot build much with these.

Soap powder boxes that contain soap powder- all products sent in should be clean.

The long tubes from wrapping paper- The children can’t help but use them as swords! Sword play has its place, but not in the art area when we are helping children to make Christmas decorations.

E. What the children are learning about this week?

The theme in little nursery this week is colour. The children will be excited to see that the dark tent will be available for them to play in and explore colour and light.

The dark tent is fantastic for inspiring children to experiment with colour. They will be able to use the light box and a variety of clear, translucent, and sensory resources to ignite their curiosity.

A fun and simple activity you can do at home with the children, to help teach them about light and colour, is to make shadow puppets on the wall. All you need is a torch.

Miss Gaffney will be reading the story of ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ with the children, which is a lovely tale, written by Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr. that focuses on animals of assorted colours. Outside the children will be dancing with coloured scarves and moving through tents and tunnels to music. The children will also have access to sensory play in the link. (The ‘link’ is the small messy play room that links Room 3 to Room 4) They can explore soap flakes, corn flour, salt, sand and shaving foam with Miss Tyler. This allows them the opportunity to broaden their vocabulary as they talk about how the messy play feels on their hands, arms, and even faces.

The theme in big nursery this week is electricity.

In room one, Mrs. Patterson will be using circuit boards and remote-control cars to teach the children how different objects can be powered by electricity and batteries. The children will also have fun ‘fixing’ things with the drill activity sets.

In room two, Miss Skai will be working with the children to tune their fine motor skills by using pipettes and paint to create some masterpieces. The children will also be able to fine tune and showcase their singing voices, as Miss Skai will build them a stage to sing and dance on.

The theme continues outside, where Mrs. Cashmore will be playing ’Buzz Tag’ with the children – the children will chase each other and pass their power onto everyone by tagging them and saying ’buzz.’

This will build the children’s confidence by playing in a group and making new friends.

Miss Howe will be encouraging the children to represent numbers using their fingers, by playing a mobile phone counting game. Miss Howe will model how to correctly represent each number to those that need support. Some children may want a challenge and will be asked to try and show one more and one less than the number of phones that they have.