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.

Wow what a Sports Day! Your children never fail to astound me and showed depths of resilience beyond their years, an ability to follow instructions and a huge willingness to take part. You must be very proud parents and deservedly so!

It is so lovely to be part of Claires Court School giving us the facilities to run a sporting event as we do but also to be able to join in with the Senior Girls “Festival on the Field” on Wednesday afternoon. The music and performances were wonderful and our little ones were dancing and thoroughly enjoying the experience. It was also an opportunity to say thank you to Mrs Sandra Young who has worked as a dinner lady for 35 years on this site and used to help out with Nursery cover. She is retiring but I hope she will pop in regularly to say hello to us all, as we will miss the happiness she brings to the Junior playground and dining room. In the meantime we wish her lots of fun in the next phase of her life.

The Nursery classes have created some lovely rainbow pictures this week, made windmills and have explored the effects of wind by blowing items of different weights across a table. With the sun and heat they have done lots of talking about protecting their skin.

Transition children have continued learning about minibeasts, their similarities and differences.

New children have been visiting again this week in preparation for their start in the autumn term and, as always, your children have shown great kindness to them.

This week Transition children have continued learning about life cycles and watching the development of live caterpillars in the classroom. Using pasta they have created pictures of butterfly life cycles and have made symmetrical butterflies using a range of materials including toothbrushes and paper plates. They have explored symmetry using mirrors, pictures and their own faces.

The Nursery classes have started looking at the life cycle of a butterfly and have observed the difference in size their caterpillars are to the Transition ones which are a week older. Using a variety of media such as clay and egg cartons they have been busy making their own caterpillars, have created paintings of butterflies and played sorting games using butterfly life cycle pieces.

All the children have been on the running track and have started practising for our Sports Day on Friday 5 July. If you are away on holiday at that time please let your child’s class leader know as soon as possible so that running teams can be organised. Please send your children in wearing practical running shoes from now on as we endeavour to use the running track as often as possible.

The Transition children have had enormous fun this week visiting our Junior Boys site, Ridgeway, where they have explored the grounds and the trees, discussing the importance of trees for the environment. They had enormous fun making colour palettes for which they had to search for different coloured pieces in the environment which could be stuck onto a card. The site lends itself to a forest school approach to learning and the children worked together to create dens with logs and branches they had discovered. A big thank you goes to Stewart Stevens, our site manager, who has driven the groups of children in the school minibus.

Back here the Nursery children have been outside enjoying the gardens and planting seeds. No doubt some of the seedlings will come home, when they are established, to be planted out and we would love to see pictures of the sunflowers grown. They have created some beautiful pictures of flowers which I am certain you will enjoy looking at.