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There have been a few changes to snack time this year, in the afternoon session we are trialing a ‘snack cafe’ this means that the children choose when they have snack, with whom they have snack and what they have to eat. We provide a selection of healthy snacks for the children to choose from and a choice of milk or water to drink. The children are free to eat at any time between 1.30 and 2.30pm and they record what they eat on the chart in the ‘cloakroom café’, They are then responsible for clearing away their cups and the tubs their snack was stored in. We hope to see several advantages with this system: increased independence for the children, the opportunity to make choices, and the freedom to eat when they reach a natural brake in their activities rather than having to leave activities they are deeply involved in just because it is snack time. The system has been running during this first week and the children are adapting to the routine very well, we will keep you posted. (Snack will continue to cost £1.00 per week, please give this to your child’s group leader on Monday if possible)
We are going to be having regular active sessions on MONDAY afternoons as part of our activities to develop physical skills. There will be a different focus each half term, starting this term by using the climbing frame we were lucky enough to get at the end of last year. To ensure all children are safe during these sessions they will work in their vests/’t’ shirts and pants/knickers, it would be a great help to us if you could make sure your child has ‘easy’ clothes on Monday’s and if you could help and encourage them to at least attempt to undress and dress themselves!
We have a lot of lovely books at nursery which we are more than happy to lend to children and their parents to share together. Reading together is a fantastic habit to develop and is proven to have a very positive impact on children’s later achievement in reading. Could you please provide a bag for your child on Monday’s so that they can choose a book to bring home during the nursery session, you can then read it together during the week and bring it back on Friday’s to be changed.
We will soon be introducing a diary for each child in which we will briefly record what they have particularly enjoyed doing that day. We hope that you will be able to read our comments in just a few seconds before you leave nursery and that they will give you a starting point to ask your child about their day. Could you please leave the diary in your child’s cloakroom pocket (i.e. the box above their photograph) on your way out? This is not meant to replace having a chat with the staff at the end of the day but to ensure that everyone has the chance to know what their child has been doing through the day.
Over the past few years we have developed a series of activities to be taken home and shared between parents and children. These reinforce the learning we are promoting in nursery. We hope you will enjoy sharing ‘story sacks’, ‘maths games’ and ‘song and rhyme DVD/ videos’ together. You will receive one of these items in turn each week on Wednesdays, please use them together and return them on the following Tuesday so that the sacks can be checked before being reissued. Please note a new game can not be given out until the previous one has been returned.
If you haven’t yet heard about toy sacks they are available on loan every other Friday at the beginning of the session. They are sacks which contain a toy, a game, a fact, and fiction book on the same theme. The cost is just £1.00 per term to cover the cost of batteries etc. Please return the sacks on the Wednesday after a week and a half (the date will be written in the label) so they can be checked before going out again.
We hope this information has been useful if you have any questions please just ask. Lesley Savage, Carmel Skillen and Christine Murray
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