Snow Leopards Nursery News
8th January 2019
We hope that you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas and a peaceful New Year and that the children are looking forward to coming back to Nursery. I know that we are looking forward to seeing them.
Topics and themes
Our topic for this term is Houses and Homes and our Theme for this half term is Traditional Tales, beginning with Little Red Riding Hood. It would be lovely if you could sing nursery rhymes and read traditional tales / fairy tales at home too.
Key workers
The nursery staff work together to plan and support all of the children, but each child will have an allocated key worker, who keeps a special eye on their development and helps to complete their Learning Journey by carrying out observations while they play and learn.
We have made changes to the key workers this term, due to changing numbers in the nursery. We will soon have a display to show everyone which keyworker is responsible for each child. In the meantime, there is a list on the window wall or you can ask one of us.
Home-School Links
The EYFS is very reliant upon collaborative working between Nursery and Home. We would be grateful if you could let us know if your child achieves something that you are proud of via the ‘proud clouds’ which will then be displayed on our ‘Wow Wall.’ We will also be displaying the children’s achievements that we are proud of. All of these can help us to tick off elements of the Early Years curriculum in your child’s Learning Journey, as there are so many milestones that are often demonstrated at home, not at Nursery.
Please let us also know if there are any events at home that may affect your child’s emotions so that we can support them whilst they are in Nursery. Also if we can support you and your child in any way please don’t hesitate to let me know. Equally we will continue to advise you about events affecting your child in Nursery should they arise.
We do our best to provide a lot of information available about what we are doing in Nursery on a daily basis. The children also have targets in different areas of learning, in line with their age and stage of development. They are all in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which is a play based curriculum designed to support early learning and progression. The targets or as we like to call them ‘next steps’ are individual to each child. If you would like more information the two websites below are very informative:
https://www.gov.uk/early-years-foundation-stage
https://www.pre-school.org.uk/early-years-foundation-stage
There is a link to them on the Snow Leopards page of the school website.
During the spring term, we hope to use our part of the website much more, so you can see our news, photos and events, just like the other classes in school. We hope you will find this helpful. Please visit the school website and sign up to receive newsletters and emails. You will then get all the weekly news direct to your inbox. www.myddleschool.org.uk
Morning Welcome Time
Welcome time is changing just a little this term, as we have had feedback that parents would like to spend a little more time in the mornings in the setting. We hope this will give you chance to chat to staff and settle your child if you wish to.
When the children come in, children will find their name as usual then if you have time, please can you support your child to choose an activity. There will be activity baskets which are age/stage appropriate and are colour coded. Green will be challenging, Blue will be quite challenging and white will be designed for those children who want to secure their learning by doing an activity that they already know. You are welcome to stay and play with your child or you can choose to let them work independently.
Snow Leopards join the rest of the school for Celebration Assembly on a Friday so we would be grateful if your child could be in Nursery by 9 0’clock on this day to ensure that we can get over to the school hall on time. If your child receives a swimming certificate, or any other award at home, they can show these in Friday assembly time, which they love to do.
Cold Weather and Outdoor Learning
The children can choose to play indoors or outdoors during our Child Initiated Learning time so hats, gloves and a warm coat are essential at this chilly time of year. In addition, warm clothing and wellies are also needed for our Wednesday Forest School sessions. We will support the children with dressing and undressing but would appreciate if you can practice at home too! If they get good at it, you could pop it on a ‘proud cloud’.
We are looking forward to a new and exciting term ahead.
Thank you for your support.
Carol Davies
