Happy holidays!
Wow! That’s the end of our first autumn half term in Nursery and we’re really pleased with how well children have settled.
It’s been lovely getting to know everyone but we have also missed being able to welcome parents and carers through our doors. We know it must be difficult to say good bye at the gate and that you must wonder what your child gets up to when you see them walk up the ramp and through the door.
To help with this, we’ve put together a video for you to watch (click on the link below). We hope that it gives you a snap shot of what life is like in Nursery once you say goodbye. We’re really proud of all of the children; they’ve quickly become familiar with our rules and routines and, as you will hopefully see in the video, they are all happy and very engaged whilst they learn through play.
Look out for our next Class News post soon – we’ll post some highlights from this week. Over the next week, we’ll also send some photos of your child at Nursery this half term. Look out for this in your inbox soon.
Parent Consultation Meetings
Zoom invites have already been sent to everyone for your Parent Consultation Meeting. Please let us know (email or speak to us after the holidays) if you haven’t received this.
Is there Room on the Broom?
This week, we’re reading ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson and some of our provision and activities will have a magical theme. We’re sure that this will be a popular story with children – they’ve already been casting spells on us last week. In fact, Mrs Long and Miss Backhouse were turned into frogs!
If you have a copy of the story, you might enjoy reading it together at bedtime this week. Some of our older children may remember the Friday story times that we enjoyed during Lockdown. Miss Morris chose this story to read for the final story in July. If you don’t have a copy of the book at home, you could listen to Miss Morris reading it instead.
The BBC adaptation of the story is also still available to watch on the BBC iPlayer.
We’ll post some photos and a video at the end of the week to share our learning with you. It’ll definitely involve investigating what’s inside a pumpkin and looking for things to go in our cauldron.
Autumn
We’ve continued learning about autumn time this week and talked about the changes that we can see all around us. In the creative area, children loved using their pincer fingers to pick up lentils and tiny pasta pieces to collage autumn leaves.
Outside, we noticed that several children were enjoying role playing ‘shops’ with the apples that they collected from our Nursery garden. To extend this play, we’ve created a vegetable shop with the children and there has been lots of conversations and turn taking as children take on the role of customer or shop keeper. We also used the apples to create a ‘refreshment trolley’ on our train!
Here are some other activities we enjoyed.
- Building towers and comparing heights with our friend’s towers.
- Singing and using the ‘5 Little Ducks’ nursery rhyme props .
- Transporting animals in the small world farm area.
- Working together to safely build with the large wooden bricks.
- Creating stories using the Peter Rabbit characters in our woodland small world area.
- Practising our hand-eye coordination using mini fishing rods.
School photographs
Children that attend Nursery on Wednesday 14 October will have their individual photograph taken.
Unfortunately, due to the current circumstances with Covid-19, school has had to make a few changes to how we normally organise the day. Sadly, this year, we’re unable to invite children that attend on other days.
Conkers galore!
You’ll have no doubt found a few conkers in your child’s pockets this week! We’ve enjoyed talking about Autumn time and exploring all of the different Autumn treasures that you can find whilst out and about on a walk at the moment.
In our maths area, we have a selection of open ended resources including apples, conkers, acorns and sticks. Children enjoyed weighing the apples, ordering the sticks by length and counting conkers. There were lots of great opportunities to develop and extend children’s vocabulary.
We also enjoyed rolling conkers down tubes and through paint! Children loved dipping the conkers in paint and getting their fingers messy.
And here are a few other highlights from the week…
- Re-telling ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ and looking for the bear outside and listening to the ‘Owl Babies’ story.
- Lots of singing, dancing and playing musical instruments.
- Playing with our new small world playground and jumping along a hopscotch track.
- Drawing ‘big’ pictures on the floor (and hiding inside giant boxes!), building train tracks and creating Duplo safari parks and peg patterns. What a busy week!
EYFS – Communication and Language
You may wonder what children are ‘learning’ at Nursery each day. We learn through play in Early Years and there are lots of areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) that we focus on during the Autumn term. One of our main focuses at the moment, is the ‘Communication and Language’ area of the curriculum. This is a Prime area and is divided into 3 important strands which includes listening and attention, speaking and understanding. Every child’s development is different, but listed below are some of the typical things that we’d expect to see in a child aged between 22-36 months. If you’d like to find out more, the ‘What to Expect When‘ document may be of interest to you.
Listening and attention
- I join in with singing songs and rhymes.
- I stop what I am doing, look at you and listen to you when you say my name.
- I listen to stories when you make different noises or use different voices as you read to me.
Speaking
- I can use simple sentences with 3-4 words to talk about what I am doing or what is happening.
- When I am talking with you, I talk about lots of different things – what I am doing, what I like or what I have done.
- I can ask questions such as “what”, “where” and “who” when I am sharing a book or playing with toys.
- I am beginning to use word endings, such as “I am going” instead of “I go” and plurals, such as “babies” when talking about more than one object or person.
Understanding
- I understand longer instructions or questions such as “Put the bricks away and then we’ll read a book”.
- I can show you that I understand “who”, “what” and “where” when you use short questions such as “Who’s that?”, “What’s that?” or “Where is?” as we look at pictures in a book or play with toys.
Reminders
- All children have an extra snack time (eg toast) each morning. As this snack is in addition to the free fruit that the government provides, there is a charge for each child. If you would like your child to enjoy this snack and haven’t paid yet, please send payment to the office this week.
- Everyone should have received an email with details about Nursery Parent/Carer consultation appointments. Please book your slot and contact the office if you haven’t received the email.
Water, worms and wobbling!
This week, we’ve continued to get to know each other and children are becoming much more confident with each other and their surroundings.
Outside, some of our children were a bit wobbly whilst trying to balance along our wooden balance beams. They worked together to help each other balance and get across safely. After a while, some children noticed that there were some worms around the balance beams. This caused lots of excitement and discussion. We talked about how the worms moved, their different lengths and we enjoyed signing ‘There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden‘. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
In the Sunshine room, we’ve introduced a new farm small world area as some children showed an interest in farm animals last week. We’ve heard lots of animal noises in the Sunshine room ever since!
The water area has also been popular again; children are beginning to remember to roll their sleeves up and put aprons on independently.
We’ve noticed that a few children have shown an interest in ‘owls’ so we have incorporated this into our Nursery plans for next week. We’ll also be learning more about Autumn, too. If you go out for a walk, talk about some of the changes that you can see in the trees and try to find some ‘Autumn treasure’. We have a collection of conkers and acorns ready for children to explore in Nursery next week.
Reminders
- If you send grapes in your child’s lunch box, please ensure that you cut them in half/quarters length ways. There’s an NHS video that outlines the importance.
- We still have a few water bottles and coats that don’t have names on. Please make sure that your child’s belongings are named. It is very hard to give out items at the end of the day if they don’t have a name in.
- Children will begin to wear their wellies more as the weather changes. If you could send them to Nursery in shoes with Velcro (NOT laces) that would be very helpful. We’re working on their independence, encouraging children to put on their own shoes and coats. Please work with us and continue this at home as well.
- Thank you to everyone who is being prompt for drop off and collection. Please ensure that you arrive at the correct time for your child’s group.
Finding our feet!
This week, children have really begun to find their feet in Nursery! They’ve enjoyed re-visiting their favourite areas to play and are finding new places to explore as well.
Outside, we had lots of fun rolling apples down the guttering and we enjoyed painting in the rain. The musical instruments were also popular; children made lots of loud noises on the pans and enhoyed using the percussion instruments whilst singing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’.
In the Rainbow room, children began to work together to build towers and create homes for some of the animals using the wooden blocks.
We’ve introduced snack time this week and children enjoyed tucking into their toast each morning and having some milk. Thank you to everyone who has already paid. If you haven’t sent your snack payment yet, please do so by Friday 02 October.
Lots of children stayed for their first lunch at Nursery this week. They all did really well and enjoyed eating their packed lunch or trying something new from their grab bag.
For now, we have kept the toys and provision available for children to play with the same as it was on their first visit. This helps them to feel settled and secure as they return to familiar surroundings each day. As children are becoming more settled now, over the next week, we’ll gradually begin to make a few changes. We’ll adapt our provision to follow the interests that children have shown so far and we’ll share these changes with you next week!
Reminders
- Please send in your snack payment, if you haven’t already. Thank you.
- Remember to send your child in a warm, waterproof coat everyday and make sure they have some wellies at Nursery. If your child comes to Nursery in wellies, please make sure they have a pair of shoes to change into when inside.
- We try to develop independence at Nursery, especially when children are putting on their own shoes. Please try to avoid laces and send children in shoes that they can attempt to fasten themselves (eg Velcro).
Leeds Needs Trees
Leeds City Council have launched a scheme to increase the number of trees around the city. Collect tree seeds (conkers, acorns, beech nuts and sweet chestnuts) and take them to a collection point around the city. The Arium is the closest one to school and you will be helping create new habitats for birds and animals.
Our first week at Nursery.
What a super first week! We’re really pleased with how well both our older children and our new children have settled into Nursery so far.
It was lovely to see yellow group again; they’ve all grown so much! It was also great to finally meet all of our new families face to face. Thank you for being patient whilst we try out our new systems and for trying to be prompt at drop off time. We know it can be really hard to say good bye if your child is having a wobble, but please be assured that we’d always call you if they didn’t cheer up quickly.
Children have enjoyed exploring our outdoor area; the climbing frame, dinosaurs and fairy garden were particular favourites. Children have also begun to familiarise themselves with the Rainbow Room, too. The home corner was very busy with children looking after babies and cooking in the kitchen. Lots of children painted and drew pictures; we have these saved in their folders until we can send them home.
(We’ll add more photos next week – we left the iPad with the rest of the photographs on at school. Oops!)
We’re looking forward to seeing children for longer visits next week where we’ll introduce snack time and lunches for some children.
We know that we’re having to do drop off and collection much quicker than we’d normally do and it makes it tricky for us to have our usual conversations. If you have any questions that require a longer conversation, please send us an email and we’ll get back to you.
Remember to check our website regularly for up-dates, reminders and photos. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week.
Welcome to Nursery
We’ve really enjoyed meeting all of our new families this week and seeing the older children during our Zoom meetings. It was lovely to find out about you all and we can’t wait for you to join us in Nursery for our settling in sessions next week.
Here are the key points for you to remember that we discussed during our Zoom conversations. If you couldn’t make the Zoom call, please read this carefully before your first visit to Nursery.
- You must have returned your paperwork to the school office before your child can stay at Nursery. Please do this on Monday 14 September if you haven’t already.
- Remember to take a passport/birth certificate to the office to show your child’s date of birth.
What should I bring to Nursery?
- A changing bag with 1-2 full sets of clothes (knickers/pants, socks, trousers, t-shirts). We can’t use our Nursery spare clothes at the moment so your child must have their own. Remember to name everything.
- A NAMED waterproof coat and pair of wellies.
- A NAMED water bottle. Please take this home each day to wash and refill.
- Remember to leave your own toys at home; we have lots of Nursery toys to play with.
Drop off and collection
- Only 1 adult should accompany your child when dropping off/collecting from Nursery. This is to help us adhere to social distancing guidelines, ensuring that there is plenty of room to wait with other parents/carers outside Nursery.
- Please wait outside Nursery at the start/end of the day. A member of staff will let you know when you can enter the playground.
- When you enter the playground, you’ll need to see a member of staff who will be standing under our gazebo. They will sign your child in and ask you who will be collecting them at the end of the session. We ask you to respect the current government guidelines for family bubbles and social distancing with adults that are not part of your bubble.
- You can let us know your child’s lunch option too. Remember, packed lunches must contain everything that your child will need (e.g. spoons) and must not contain nuts. The current lunch menu can be found here.
- As parents/carers are unable to enter Nursery under the current guidelines, children will play outside in our Nursery garden.
- Once you have settled your child, please leave Nursery promptly. We’re really hoping that there’ll be smiles all round… but if your child is having a wobble, please give them a big cuddle and say good bye and allow a member of staff to settle them. We will call you if they continue to be upset and struggle to settle afterwards. Thank you for being so understanding with this, we have adapted our usual settling in routines to make the transition a happy one, despite restrictions in place.
- Blue and green group children will be collected from the outside area.
- Red and yellow group children will be collected from the Nursery main door (this is the blue door in the photograph above).
- Please check your child’s individual transition plan for their start and finish times. We have staggered these to reduce congestion and allow for social distancing. Please arrive at your given time; children will be waiting inside with their coats on ready to leave.
As we mentioned during our Zoom conversations, all of these arrangements are new to staff as well. Please be patient as we try out our new systems and routines; we’ll make changes if necessary.
If you have any other questions, please email us. scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Finally, we promised that we’d take a few photos so that you could talk to your child and show them some of the lovely areas that are ready for them to play in. We know from our conversations that some of our children’s current interests are dinosaurs, Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, trains, fairies and role playing with babies and pretend cooking. We also have found copies of some of your favourite stories including the Gruffalo and Fox in Socks.
We’re confident that we have something for everyone to enjoy. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week.