Welcome to our April/May Newsletter

30th Celebration

March saw the Pre-School Centre celebrate its 30th year. We hosted a very large party to celebrate with children and families both past and present. It was a wonderful day full of laughter with lots of reminiscing. So many people commented on their fond memories about their time with us. It made the team feel very valued and we are privileged to have played such an important role in the lives of so many families.

“I had a great time at the party, I felt so special, everyone remembered me. I didn’t want to leave”
Freddie

“It was lovely to see you all, we had a great time reminiscing and seeing Pre-School in its present form, it was, and evidently remains, outstanding in every way!”
The Kennedy family

“That was so nostalgic, it was amazing, I felt lovely and warm inside”
Thomas

“Thank you, more than words can say for, helping us to bring up our two amazing children. What you do is so important”
The Montgomery family

Baby Room

New Experiences

To ensure the babies are comfortable with other members of staff, we invited Chris to visit the room to do Music Man sessions with the babies. This has been extremely successful; all the babies were very engaged and loved the interaction. They took to Chris' presence well and we’re not fazed by him at all, the babies showed good concentration, understanding and willingness to explore new experiences. The babies enjoyed learning new songs and tried to join in with actions. We are going to make this a regular part of the Baby Rooms’ routine.

Crèche 1

Emotions

Recently in Crèche 1 we have been focusing on emotions and self-assurance. We have undertaken a range of activities from emotion paintings to tuff tray activities. We have enhanced our room with an emotions tree, an emotions board, and placed a mirror in our home corner.

The children have really enjoyed engaging in our activities based around The Colour Monster to look at what colours represent each emotion. From this, the children have been copying words such as “yellow” and “happy”.

In our sensory area, the children have enjoyed looking at our emotions tree, with different simple shapes representing the emotions happy, sad, calm and angry. The children also enjoyed looking in the reflective shapes to see their faces. The older children within Crèche 1 have really noticed the links between the emotions tree and our emotions board, showing interest in the colours. For the younger children, we have sensory bottles which also link to The Colour Monster colours alongside the emotion bean bags.

Crèche 2

Spring Has Sprung

We have been outside enjoying the spring sunshine. The children have enjoyed eating a variety of fruit for snacks whilst listening to our surroundings. The children were able to hear the birds tweeting, the vehicles passing by and the wind blowing the trees.

The children were able to extend their vocabulary by learning new single words such as birds, cars, bus and windy. The children really enjoyed experiencing snack time outdoors. We are following on from this experience by having a teddy bears picnic where the children will be invited to bring in their own teddy bear. Crèche 2 are really looking forward to being outdoors more with summer approaching.

Nursery 1

Messy Maths!

Our children particularly enjoy messy play, so we decided to add some maths into our goop play!

We provided the children with measuring cylinders of different sizes ranging from small to big. The children were encouraged to use new language such as “big” “small” “full” “empty” in their play. The children enjoyed using spoons to fill the cylinders with goop and watching them slowly fill.

Some children further challenged themselves and started to count the amount of spoonful’s it took them to fill the cylinders, counting in sequence “one, two, three,” other children had a go at counting in sequence sometimes needing support from their peers or an adult if they missed a number in the sequence.

This activity also provided the children with the opportunity to explore the effect of colour mixing. The children enjoyed getting to mix two colours together and guess what colour the result may be.

Nursery 2

Green Fingers

We have been planting a variety of seeds and placing them into little pots first to help them grow. We looked after them by spraying them gently with water and when they were starting to grow and were ready to be outside, we planted them in the large plant pots in new compost. We are learning that when we play outside, we have to look and watch them grow. We have planted lavender, wildflowers, chives and coriander.

Pre-School 1

Eid

To celebrate Eid the children in Pre-School 1 were involved in a variety of activities. The children coloured in their own mosques and made cards, we also read some stories about Ramadan and Eid and explained to the children what happens. We explained that some of the children in our room were celebrating Eid and how it was important to learn about and celebrate lots of different festivals. We spoke about how the adults fast during Ramadan and how Eid is a celebration to mark the end of Ramadan. To conclude the festivities, we made some lovely sweet treats for the children to take home and give out to parents and siblings.

Pre-School 2

Ramadan

During the past month the children (and staff) have been learning about Ramadan and taking part in a variety of activities. Aylan’s Mummy visited and read the children’s story called ‘Moon Ramadan’. She talked to the children about the festival and different aspects of it, such as how the adults fast during the day, she also taught the children a traditional song and ring game. 

Thoraya’s Mummy also visited, she brought some traditional costumes in for us to look at and try on. She told us how her family celebrate Ramadan and Eid, brought a copy of the Quran to look at and made us a special treat of traditional sweet date coconut balls to try, she told us that the grownups eat these balls when fasting ends each day before they eat their meal.

In the room we took part in a variety of different activities, creating our own patterns when we explored henna hand painting, making our own mosques, using pre-cut shapes and assembling them in different ways, different number matching activities, reading stories, tasting dates and describing how they tasted and felt. We talked about kindness and being grateful and created our own tree of gratitude where the children each discussed the things they were grateful for. We also made a jar of good deeds where we discussed what a good deed is and what good deeds we could do to help families and friends at Pre-School.

The children have learnt so much throughout the different activities and have shared their knowledge with their families at home. 

Pre-School 3

International Women's Day

International Women's Day provided an opportunity for the children to learn just how important it is that we all play our part to make the world a more equal and fairer place to live. We have looked at books about past and current female leaders and the children were encouraged to draw their favourite female hero or what they would like to be when they grow up. This activity encouraged them to think about the women in their lives that they know and those we have learnt about.

The children have used other learning tools such as ICT equipment to explore and learn about a woman called Cynthia Breazeal, she developed the robot ‘Kismet’, which looked into the expressive social exchange between humans and humanoid robots.

The children then had the opportunity to explore and use our own ICT toys. The children learnt lots of new skills, including how to make things work, taking turns, sharing, and understanding that they may have to wait for things. To support this, timers were used, and the children grasped the concept quickly.

We also looked at female artists such as Bridget Riley who painted optical illusion pictures, the children were encouraged to paint their own using white paper and black paint. This new medium really interested the children, and they created their own works of art.

Reminders

Pre-School Website and Newsfeed

We would like to remind parents that you can access regularly updated information from our website and on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

Funding

Parents who are claiming 30 hours funding and 2-year funding, please ensure that your eligibility code is revalidated every three months from the date of issue onwards. Failure to revalidate your code will result in a loss of funding.

Accident Forms

All parents a reminder to please ensure that when your child is in attendance at Pre-School to check your ParentZone app regularly, if any accident forms appear they must be acknowledged by a parent prior to collection at the end of their child's session/day.