This Week

The nursery classes have been learning about warm clothing and practising putting on scarves, hats, mittens and gloves this week and on the subject of cold weather please send your children in wearing warm coats, hats, scarves and mittens which all need to be named. As always, they continue to practise their number skills, and the photo above shows the Honeycomb children counting out 10 animals from the larger group and taking turns in doing so.

With December arriving this weekend Christmas will soon be with us. There is already a buzz of excitement about everything the children are doing and I am sure trees will be arriving in the rooms very soon.

Next Week

We will all be getting into the swing of things for Christmas, doing lots of related crafts, and are looking forward to going over to the main hall with the children to watch the Junior Girls Nativity on Thursday morning.

This week and next

The Nursery have been having fun learning about migration and particularly birds, and have created some very colourful and feathery specimens.

The week commencing 19 November the three Nursery classes will discuss and listen to stories and information about “seasonal changes” and do a range of related crafts. Their number is 9, the colour is white and the letter is a.

Family Observations Module

Parents sometimes ask me how they can add their own observations of their child having one of those “wow” moments to the observations file I send you each half term so I have taken some words from the "2build a profile" website which might help you. The NEW Family Observations module lets learners’ parents and family members take an active role in contributing to the “2build a profile” observation portfolio!

Key Features:

• Parents submit photos or videos to a special email address.
• Once the observations are submitted to 2BAP, they are to be approved by teachers before they are entered into the learner’s observation portfolio.
• During the approval process, teachers can read/change parent comments, add comments of their own and add framework objectives.

How are Family Observations submitted?

The observations are emailed to 2BAP by the family member. This can be done by:

• Replying to the standard PDF Learning Journey that has been sent to you at the end of each half term, including a photo in the reply.
• Any parent that is registered to receive PDFs can email inbox@2buildaprofile.com directly with the observation. The observation will automatically be allocated to the correct child (in the case where more than one learner is associated with an email, the email should contain the name of the child in the subject).

 What happens after submitting a family observation?

• Once a submission is processed successfully, the teacher is notified by email (if a teacher email is set up under that class in parent share area) and a notification appears on the home page of the Web Suite.
• If a submission is not processed successfully, an email is sent to the person submitting, informing them that there was an issue. This could be due to reasons such as a photo being too small or just that there was no attachment.

Reminders

• Please check your email as I have sent the “2build a profile” observations of your child for this half term.
• Please inform us if your child will be away at the time of our Nursery Department Christmas production which will take place on Tuesday 11 December at 9.00 a.m. with the dress rehearsal happening the day before. We ask that all children attend both mornings even if it is not a booked session. There will be no charge for this if it is not a regular session. I will be sending out your seating requirements form with costume requests nearer the time.
• We wish you all a very happy half term fortnight and will take this opportunity to let you know the Thames Valley Police Halloween code:
  • Please only call at houses you know! Don’t knock on doors where there is a “No trick or treat” sign.
  • Be visible – your children may be dressed as dark beings but they need to be seen by other road users.
  • Take a torch with you.
  • Stay in areas lit well by street lights. Be careful not to frighten vulnerable people, especially the elderly.
  • Don’t let your children talk to strangers on the street.
  • Don’t let your children go into any houses.
  • No treat means no trick – don’t let a good night go bad. Please respect other people’s wishes!

Thank you

The local branch of the Salvation Army has collected the boxes of food and personal hygiene items and is extremely grateful for your kindness. I am certain that local families in need will be very appreciative.

This week

Nursery children have made farm animal face masks, have played with small world farms, sorted animals by type and counted them, and have been learning a farm related song. They were so excited on Monday morning when they discovered the lilac bantums in the nursery garden! Mrs Britt had brought in a cockerel and a couple of hens from her farm which the children were able to handle, feed and observe. Later in the week the children went for a walk around the school, managing the staircases really well and discovering the offices and dining room.

A very big thank you goes to everyone who joined in our 'Jeans for Genes' day today. We raised £33.00 for this very worthy cause.

I ran out of space last week to mention that we all celebrated Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, by listening to related stories and eating apple dipped in honey, which the children thoroughly enjoyed.

What an amazing summer we have had and what a joy to still have the sun shining when the term starts and to see all the children outside laughing, playing and thoroughly enjoying themselves.