Getting to know you
This week, we’ve continued with the very important job of helping children to settle into Nursery. They’re already becoming more familiar with our routines and are beginning to get to know each other. In fact, we’re so impressed with how well children have settled, we’ll begin short Key Person group times next week.
As we’ve been getting to know everyone, we’ve been talking about our families. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery next week. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends. scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Here are a few snaps from this week. As you can see, we’ve enjoyed building, drawing, painting, printing, creating patterns and lots more!
Reminders
- If you haven’t shown us proof of your child’s D.O.B yet, please bring it to Nursery or email us a copy.
- Is your child’s water bottle named? We still have lots of water bottles that don’t have names on and it’s very hard to give them out when there are up to 30 bottles and many duplicates. Please make sure it is labelled clearly with their name.
- More names… There are lots of cardigans, jumpers and coats that don’t have names on. Again, please make sure that you check and use a marker pen to quickly write a name on the care label. Thank you for supporting us with this – it results in much less lost property.
Help your child at home – recent workshops
Thank you to everyone who has attended our recent Zoom sessions to help you support your child at home. Watch the phonics session and the Early Years introduction.
Exploring Nursery
What a busy week! It was lovely to see our older children return to Nursery on Monday and hear all about their holiday adventures. They all settled back into Nursery brilliantly and were quick to notice the changes that we’ve made to the Rainbow and Sunshine Rooms.
We also welcomed our new children to Nursery for their first sessions this week. There were lots of happy faces and just a few wobbles! Try not to worry too much if your child has a little wobble or struggles to say goodbye in the morning. We often find that a quick hug, a big smile and waving good bye works best and children usually settle very quickly once you’ve gone. We will always give you a call if your child continues to be upset, so if you don’t hear from us, you can presume that your child is happy and busy playing!
Children have loved exploring their new environments, both inside and out. The climbing frame, sand and dinosaurs have been very popular in the garden and inside, children have enjoyed scooping water beads, rolling out the dough, cooking in the home corner and painting at the easel.
Over the next few weeks, we will continue helping children to settle in and become familiar with our routines.
Reminders
- Please make sure your child has a spare pair of wellies and a full change of clothes to leave at Nursery.
- Remember to bring a NAMED water bottle every day.
- Help your child to become more independent by… choosing shoes with Velcro fastenings (not buckles or laces) and ensuring that trousers are elasticated and can be pulled up/down easily when toileting.
Welcome to Nursery!
It’s been lovely to meet all of our new children and their families this week and we can’t wait to get to know you all during our transition sessions.
Who’s who?
We’re very lucky to have an experienced, enthusiastic and very friendly team in Nursery. Here’s a quick reminder of who is who!
Left to right – Mrs Beesley, Mrs Long, Miss Morris, Mrs Crompton, Miss Miller and Mrs Gosper.
Mrs Beesley (EYFS Leader, Nursery teacher) teaches in Nursery on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Mrs Long (Nursery teacher) teaches in Nursery on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Mrs Beesley and Mrs Long share the Key Person role for Red group children.
Mrs Gosper (Blue group) and Mrs Crompton (Green group) support teaching and learning in Nursery everyday.
Miss Morris enjoys playing in Nursery every morning and lunchtime. Miss Miller joins us at lunch time and stays for the afternoon. They are Yellow group’s Key People.
We are also supported at lunch times by Mrs Butler and Mrs Quinn.
Stay and play visits
Please come to the main Nursery door (all colour groups) and you will be signed in on your arrival. Remember to wear a face covering (unless exempt) and sanitise your hands as you enter.
Reminder – please email or bring passports/birth certificates if we didn’t see them when we visited you this week.
Nursery dropping off/collection
To ease congestion in the morning, we’ve decided to trial having two entrances to Nursery open for registration.
- Red and Yellow group – Please wait to be greeted and registered at the main Nursery blue door.
- Green and Blue group – Please walk down the side of Nursery and through the playground to the Sunshine Room door where Mrs Gosper or Mrs Crompton will greet you.
At the end of the day, ALL children will leave from the main Nursery door. Please be patient as we get to know parents and carers. We will dismiss children one by one and may ask for passwords until we become more familiar with everyone.
To ease congestion at the end of the day, children may be collected up to 10 minutes before the end of our session (see below for times).
Nursery session times
Monday 9.00am – 2.15pm (Collection from 2.05pm onwards)
Tuesday-Friday 9.00am – 3.15pm (Collection from 3.05pm onwards)
Morning session 9.00am – 12.00pm
*Please ensure that you collect your child promptly at the end of the session.
Nursery – Let’s play!
We’ve been very busy getting our Rainbow Room and garden ready for you all. We’ve tried to make sure that there’s something for everyone to enjoy – including some of your favourite things that you told us about when we visited you this week.
We’ve got Paw Patrol, fairies, dinosaurs, The Gruffalo and our bikes ready for you to come and play. See you soon!
Lunch menus
Here is a link to the lunch menus for next term; they’re on a 3 week cycle. If your child would like to have a school lunch, let Nursery staff know your choice at registration each morning.
It’s nearly time…
We’ve had a super summer and we’re looking forward to another fun filled year in Nursery. Hopefully, you’ve all had lots of adventures too; we can’t wait to find out about them.
If you are one of our older children and are returning to Nursery, you’ll have received a letter before the holidays to about your first two days. Remember, we’re on home visits during the first week so we’ll have to wait until Monday 13 September until we see your happy faces again! Please refer to your letter for further details.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (07-09 September) the Nursery team will be out and about to say hello to all of our new children and their families for their ‘door-step’ Home visit. Fingers crossed the weather will be kind to us but we’ll have an umbrella with us, just in case! During this short visit, we’ll introduce ourselves and answer any questions that you may have. Your child’s individual transition into Nursery (which included a Home Visit date, ‘Stay and Play’ details and their first session date) was outlined in your transition letter that you received in July. Please get in touch with us as soon as possible if you have any queries. Our Nursery email is scholesf1@spherefederation.org
What does my child need?
- A waterproof coat (NAMED)
- A pair of wellies (NAMED)
- A water bottle (NAMED)
- A drawstring bag containing a full change of clothes (including a top, trousers/leggings, underwear and socks – ALL NAMED)
- A sun hat on sunny days (NAMED)
In case you missed it above, you must NAME all items that your child brings to Nursery! You don’t need to get special name labels, a simple marker pen (e.g. Sharpie) in the care label is fine! It is very hard to return missing items to their owners when they’re not named.
Next week, we’ll also be busy preparing Nursery for you to come and play. Keep checking our News page and we’ll post some photos for you as soon as we’re ready.
See you soon!
Happy Holidays!
What a busy two weeks! We’ve had so much fun, playing in the sunshine, visiting the farm, joining in Sport’s Day races on the field and dancing at our ‘Under the Sea’ party. We’ve put together a short video for you to watch of our last few weeks in Nursery.
Nursery Video – End of term fun!
Thank you for all of your kind words, cards and gifts this week. We hope that you all have a great Summer holiday and we’ll look forward to seeing some of you in Nursery in September and some of you, next door in Reception! We’d also like to say good bye to those children that are moving to other schools – we hope that you love your new school and make lots of new friends. Finally, we’re very sad to say good bye to Miss Backhouse but we hope that she has enjoys her very well earned retirement.
Farm visit – allergies
Please remember to make sure that staff know if your child is allergic to any animals before the farm visit on Tuesday. Thank you
Five Little Speckled Frogs
One of the first things that we noticed on Monday morning was that our tadpoles had grown front legs! As we have been learning about the life cycle of a frog over the last few weeks, some children were able to explain what was going to happen next. We took some tadpoles out of the tank to look at them more closely and we could see that their tails had also started to shrink. Towards the end of the week, we released some of the froglets back to the pond as they were starting to jump around the tank and needed to be free. Hopefully, they’ll all be happily sitting on a log with their friends in the pond now! Here’s a link to one of our favourite songs for you to sing a long together at home – Five Little Speckled Frogs.
In the dough area, we used dough extruders to help strengthen our finger muscles. Our oldest children will be moving to Reception soon and this is a great way of helping to prepare their hands for writing and holding a pencil effectively. We had to push really hard to squeeze the dough through the holes to make spaghetti.
An extremely large cardboard box has been very popular this week, providing many hours of open ended role play opportunities. It’s been a pirate ship, a bus, a train and a cave so far.
Next week, we’re really looking forward to welcoming some four legged visitors to our school field on Tuesday. We can’t wait to meet the animals and learn a little bit more about them. In preparation for the visit, we’ve created some farm small world areas and children have already begun to talk about their previous experiences of visiting farms.
Did you receive your ‘Under the Sea’ party invitation? Don’t forget to let us know if you’d like your child to attend the party if they don’t usually come to Nursery on Wednesday afternoons.
Scarecrow competition
We will be making some scarecrows in school. If anyone lives in the village, you can join in individually and display them outside your house. If not, and you want to make your own, bring your scarecrow to school on Friday 16 July and we will display it outside school over the weekend.
