This Week

Christmas has arrived in the classrooms with the children decorating trees, playing with magic snow, creating calendars, making reindeer food, Santa napkins, clay decorations and cards, to name but a few of the wonderful things they have done, and which you are sure to enjoy when they bring them home at the end of term. With December here so is the cold weather so please ensure that your child has a suitably warm coat, hat, scarf and mittens which should all be named.

We had our Nursery specific Open Morning on Tuesday so many thanks for your kind recommendations. Your children were a brilliant advertisement and the Junior girls did a tremendous job bringing the visitors to the Nursery Department.

We had a lovely time on Tuesday afternoon when the Lower Junior Girls entertained us with the dress rehearsal of their production “Lights Camel Action 2 – The Sequin” The children were spellbound and sat mesmerised throughout.

Reminders

Please send in your child’s costume for our Christmas Production as soon as you have it organised. Many thanks.

Charity

As in previous years we will be helping those less fortunate in our local community by providing the Maidenhead branch of the Salvation Army with Christmas hampers which the Year 10 girls will make up. The Nursery Department have been asked to provide biscuits which can be left in boxes in the Nursery Hall from now until Thursday 12 December. Many thanks in advance for your support.

Christmas Jumper Day is on Friday 13 December and we would appreciate a minimum £1.00 donation for “Save the Children”. Please do not feel you have to go out and buy a special jumper for this. Some of the best have been tinsel and baubles etc. attached to a regular top which the children have been involved in creating!

Requests

Please do not send your child in with laced shoes/boots unless they are able to tie and untie these themselves. When getting a class of 16 dressed for outside, a lot of play time is lost if staff have to help each child with tricky footwear. Similarly with gloves; unless your child can put these on independently please send in named mittens. With many thanks for your understanding.

Thank you to the PTA

The children arrived back to a new climbing frame in the garden and with great excitement were quickly using it so a huge thank you goes to the PTA for providing this, and to our Maintenance team, Stewart and Tony, for assembling it during the half term.

This Week

On Wednesday the children went over to the main School hall to discover the stage and begin practising their Christmas production songs. Although louder singing needs to be developed, the confidence displayed by your children in this change to their routine was wonderful to see.

Transition children were amazed to see their home corner transformed into the Amazon rainforest on their return from half term thanks to Miss Green! They have been learning about the different countries which make up South America, role playing with boa constrictors and have been busy making collages using rainforest colours and textures for a display.

It has been a busy week with the Nursery classes making poppies for this weekend, learning about festivals of light, including Diwali and Bonfire Night, and making fireworks pictures. Honeycomb children were singing a wonderful song about Leo the lion when I popped in yesterday. Displays have appeared of their learning about African animals with some large scale pictures in the Beehive class. We have had three new children join this week and it is so lovely to see how quickly they have settled in Busy Bees.

The week commencing 11 November the three Nursery classes will discuss and learn about “Australasia”, the number 8, the colour orange and the letter a whilst Transition children will continue learning about the rainforest in South America and also the letter a.

Reminders

• I hope to see many of you tomorrow evening at our Annual Fireworks held at our Junior Boys site which is usually enormous fun. The weather forecast at the moment looks slightly damp so fingers crossed it is dry for the event. As we always say in Nursery there is no such thing as bad weather just inappropriate clothing! You can pay on the gate if you have not booked tickets but this will not guarantee food.
• Please return your session requests for January by Wednesday at the latest as I will be allocating the new children their classes that afternoon.
• Towards the end of next week I will be sending this half term’s observations on “2build a profile” so please check your emails. 
• Please note that the Breakfast Club is available from 7.30am - 8.30am but the service of food stops at 8.10am. If your child arrives after 8.10 am food will not be served.
• Please ensure that you supervise your children as soon as they have been handed over by the Nursery staff as we are aware that some are running off and sometimes parents forget to bolt the gate! 

Reminders

• Please bolt the Nursery gate behind you as you enter and leave, for the safety of yours and other children.
• Mobile phones – Please note that in our Claires Court Safeguarding policy, which you can read here, it states that “parents are not permitted to use their mobile phones or camera in or around the EYFS setting without prior approval from the Head” (page 20). For the safety of the children and EYFS compliance please abide by this. If you need to make or receive a call please do so outside the Nursery entrance gate and out of view. This applies from 07.30am-6.30pm covering both Extended Day Care times and the core Nursery hours.
• Please send your child in with a coat now that the weather is autumnal.

Wow, what a busy time we had on Open Morning this Friday and your children were stars. They managed so well with lots of visitors in their classrooms and were “more outgoing towards unfamiliar people and more confident in new social situations” which is one of the PSE self-confidence and awareness statements in the EYFS.

Transition children have been learning about Australian animals and extending their language with words such as marsupials. They have made koala masks and created Aboriginal dot pictures of animals. The three Nursery classes have been learning about Europe. I walked into their rooms yesterday to find them travelling to Paris by ferry, Eurostar and car; and then going into cafes for a breakfast of croissants and fruit! Orders were being taken and payments made; the staff were in berets and aprons adding to the atmosphere! Today the children were celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year festival which starts this weekend, and were thoroughly enjoying slices of apple dipped in honey!

In our first full week the Nursery children continued to settle in to their new environment, make new friends and adapt to our routines. They discovered how to make the colour pink by making the playdough with red and white paint as well as the usual ingredients, creating Number 1’s using printing techniques and painting generally with the pink colour they had created. I was so impressed with how the children coped with the fire drill we had yesterday as they accepted the loud alarm very well, followed the instructions and did not shed a single tear despite the change in routine.

The week commencing 16th September the 3 Nursery rooms will discuss “Europe”, the number 2, the colour blue and the letter u. Any small toy incorporating blue would be lovely as a “Show and Tell” item. Transition children will be discussing the topic “Australia – what it’s like” and the letter l.