Little Tots Nursery - Reading Newsletter - Spring 2015

Dear Parents,

Welcome back from our half term break. The weather is showing signs of improving, and Spring seems to be

upon us with buds sprouting and snowdrops blooming. With these warmer days, we look forward to all the

activities that surround the warmer conditions eg. Forest School sessions and visits to The Secret Garden and

our Allotment, also taking advantage of our garden at Nursery with lots of outdoor play, water play and plant-

ing fruit and vegetables.

Topic of the Term

This term we are covering the themes of Shape and Colour. The children really showed great

interest in colours and shapes towards the end of last term and we thought it would be a good idea

to grasp that interest and expand their knowledge. We sent out a Spider graph to all parents re-

cently showing you how this topic fits into the Early Learning goals, this will be added to daily

with regards to activities carried out, either staff led or child led/initiated (things like light and

dark shading pictures, colour mixing, coloured cake making).

As you will see around the Nursery and with the art that your child has bought home, all the chil-

dren have been very creative and enthusiastic with their art work. This topic will develop further

over the term covering “Elmer the Elephant”, Spring life drawings and undertaking the vast job of

changing our 3 college mounted pictures in the front room – we are still collecting different

shaped and coloured articles to use within this art piece, so would be grateful if you could donate

anything.

We also cover a Letter of the week, as well as a Number and a Shape of the week, which are

taught through various different activities, during the day. We also include a Makaton “Sign

of the Month” this encourages communication within the Nursery for all children of different

languages and abilities and is a fun element to learn. We will continue to send out a weekly

email with our Activities of the week and outings/planned sessions in – feedback is always

welcome!

After Easter, our Topic will be “People who help us”, so we are looking for visitors to the

Nursery who help us on our daily lives i.e. Nurse, Postman, Milkman, Policeman, Doctor

etc. – if you know of anyone that would be willing to visit us, please let Heather, Sarah or

Becky know.

Key Workers - Do you know who you child’s key worker is????

If not please ask! Every child has a member of staff responsible for their well-being

and education. They have a willing role in engaging your child into Nursery life, en-

couraging them to gain new knowledge of the world around them. That staff member

is your first point of call, regarding any issues you may have regarding Nursery life,

or feel free to call Heather, Sarah or Becky if there is any other matter that you have

concerns on and we will do our best to help with the matter in hand. As a Key Worker

they will encourage social interaction with all staff within the Nursery as this proves

essential if their Key Worker is off on holiday or sick, resulting in continuity. All

staff will work with your child throughout the nursery week showing continued sup-

port and an all-round impression of your child’s development.

As a Nursery, we do hope that each child has a well – grounded and happy experience at Nursery, gaining the skills that they need,

in preparation for the big outside world of education. As a whole, the Nursery cannot observe all areas of development for each

child and rely on you as parents providing an aid in recording each milestone that your child takes. Little Tots are very committed

to parents and the Nursery working as partners, to gather this information giving a holistic view. In each child’s Learning Journey

there is a Home Record sheet that we would like all parents to complete termly giving us information on new activities that your

child may do at home i.e., being an avid football player, counting to 10 in French, Swimming a length at the swimming pool (all

things that here at Nursery we cannot see!!!!).

Profiles / Parent Reviews

Your child’s profile will be ready to look through during the last week of term leading up to the Easter break. We will also be hav-

ing Parent review meetings for parents and their child’s key person during that week. We will be putting up a list of times for each

Key person up for you to choose you time slot. If the times are unsuitable to you please speak to your key person to arrange an

alternative time once the new term has started.

Garden Equipment Needed

Do you have any large garden pots or wind chimes that you no longer need?

Have you any planks of wood that workmen have left behind?

How about rope, buckets, tarpaulin????

If so, please can we have them to help extend our outdoor garden programme.

Over the next few months we are hoping to continue our success of last year and grow lots of different vegetables and fruits with

the children. It is important for the children to see how plants grow and what they need to grow and the fact that carrots don’t just

come in a bag from Tesco’s, as some thought!

Parent Helpers

Last term we asked for parents/grannies etc, to come into Nursery and bring with them a skill that they could share with the chil-

dren. We had very little response from this. Last year we had mums coming in to do cooking, a dance and music session and art.

We would like to try this out as an ongoing idea with parents offering to come into help with various skills like cooking with a

small group, sewing, art, gardening or anything that you think the children would benefit from. If you can help, please can you

speak to Heather, Sarah or Becky or email Lisa. We do have an open door policy here at Nursery and it means a lot for the children

to have their Mum/Dad/Granny/Aunt etc coming in to help. It is all part of the sharing experience and pride in one’s self and self -

esteem that as a Montessori school, we are keen to promote.

Forest School

On a Friday our Funded 3 & 4 year old children get the chance to use our Little Tot’s minibus and assess our Forest School site in

Mortimer West End. This is a fantastic experience for the children to explore woodland, discovering nature, making dens, making

camp fires and using simple tools to craft with. Each child will receive a green Forest School bag to put a complete set of clothes

(socks, pants and outerwear please) in to take with us. Please put a plastic carrier bag inside the bag containing their shoes which

we can then use to put your child’s muddy clothes/wellington boots in after use. A lunch box is essential for the morning Forest

School children, as we do aim to stay out all morning and return just before 1pm. In the afternoons we are not allowed to use the

Forest School site in Mortimer due to maintenance time, but we still go off site and visit the Burghfield woods, Prospect and

Caversham parks, as well as finding other exciting places to visit. If you have any suggestions of places that you have visited that

fit in with the “outdoor ethos” please speak to Heather.

Allotments and The Secret Garden

We will continue to use the Secret Garden over the Summer. We have a large plot of allotment within the Secret garden that we

used last year and intend on getting it dug over in readiness for the children to start planting in over the early Summer Term. Any

help would be appreciated with regards to digging the plot over (we may even do a digging Saturday morning to get all hands on

deck ,so watch this space).

We will continue to use the Nursery garden to encourage our children to plant and grow vegetables and fruit in, offering a wide

range of skills from creativity, nurturing, self-importance and well-being to mathematical and language knowledge – all whilst hav-

ing fun.

Encouraging the Montessori approach outside of the Nursery, a plea to help the children help themselves.

“Help me to help myself”

At Little Tots, we encourage the children to be independent learners, through observation,

exploration and copying role models to achieve their learning potential in all areas of the

EYFS and Montessori curriculums. By encouraging the children to be independent, i.e.

putting on their own coats, finding their names at entrance time, preparing to cut the fruit

and self-selecting snack and drinks at snack time, all promotes this. We also encourage

the children to self select activities off of the shelves as this is chosen by them and encour-

ages a far greater degree of concentration. With all Montessori equipment, there is a vis-

ual control of error and mistakes are made which can be rectified easily. We also say “it’s

ok to do something wrong as practise does make perfect”!

I know it may make take longer at home to encourage these motions, but in the long term, you will have a child ready and willing

to explore, try new things and want to do things for themselves. When children reach school age it is expected that the child can

dress/undress themselves and have basic self-help skills, so by starting early, your child will be ready willing and able to fulfil at

school where others may struggle with these tasks.

What can we do???

Encourage your child to put on/take off their own coat and shoes.

Tidy away their toys as at Nursery they tidy away before getting the next activity out.

Look in the mirror to blow / wipe their own noses/wipe their face.

Take their plate to the sink when finished with (maybe help wash up)

Prepare their snack/cold meal with help.

Help lay the table /tidy away.

All of these encourage the child to feel capable, able to try and a sense of wellbeing/important ness, within the home/Nursery.

Up and Coming Events

13th March – Red Nose Day – All children to wear red with exciting activities planned - £1 contributions please. Thank you to

all that took part, we raised a £79.69 for Comic Relief. Well done!

21st & 22nd April - Nursery photos. Open to sibling’s and children that do not attend on those days

Weekly Activities at Nursery Summer Term 2015

Monday AM - Dance & Drama with Ellie

Monday PM - Secret Garden visit

Tuesday AM - Yoga

Wednesday AM - Secret Garden

Wednesday PM - MAD Academy

Thursday AM - Cooking / Secret Garden visits

Friday AM & PM - Forest School trips

A Few Nags!

Boots and Coats

Outdoor Learning is an important part of the National Curriculum to extend learn-

ing out into the garden. It is very valuable to ALL children to experience this,

regardless of the climates. As they say in Norway, “There is no such thing as bad

weather, its bad clothing”.

Please, please send your child into Nursery equipped for the weather. We do go out into the garden every day and some children

have not been able to follow their desires to go out and play, due to lack of appropriate clothing. Each child should have a

NAMED coat, welly boots, a hat and gloves. As the weather is now turning

milder please bear in mind what your child’s needs might be for the day,

providing a jumper/rain jacket, as well as sun cream and a sun hat for the

warmer elements of the day. We will have a high factor sun cream here on

site, but if you prefer to bring in your child’s own, please label it clearly and

hand it to a member of staff. We do expect you to apply sun cream prior to

your child entering Nursery but it will be reapplied before going out into the

garden.

Cloakroom Space

As you can imagine and see on certain days, that catering for 111 pairs of

welly boots does not work! Due to a lack of space in the cloakroom, we are

asking that your child’s Welly boots are brought in daily. Each child should

bring their NAMED WELLY BOOTS in, in a separate bag to their clothes

and be placed under their peg.

Door Policy

We would like to remind everyone to make sure that the front entrance door is kept closed at all times. There is always a mem-

ber of staff manned at the main door, who is responsible for the safe entrance and exit of families. They need to concentrate to

check on the safety of all the children, allowing no-one passed her/him unless they are aware of it. Any queries/questions that a

parent/carer may have should be directed onto the second person beside the door, who is responsible for checking off each child

on the register and to help deal with any queries that people may have.

We at Little Tots ensure a safe exit and safe strategy, but we rely on parents to help us by being aware of our safety procedures at

Children with temperatures

If your child has had to have Calpol prior to coming to Nursery think – should they really be going?? Germs fly around and spread in

environments like nurseries, please bear that in mind and ask yourself, would you sit next to a person full if the sneezes and coughing

badly? …. NO.

Nursery session time

Little Tots Nursery provides all year around childcare with definite sessions times. As a Montessori setting which adheres to a work

cycle lasting for 2 – 2 ½ hours, it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue this work ethos with constant interruptions of parents

arriving at any time in the afternoon to collect their child. We do understand that there are times when you may finish work early and

want to pick up then rather than waiting until the session has finished. The staff and children are all actively engrossed within their

teaching and learning and the disruption of the door going and people walking through, interrupts the child’s concentration and also the

staff teaching that activity also has to stop what they are doing to attend to this. Please if possible, can you adhere to the set times of

pick-ups 11.30am for a standalone funded morning child, 1pm for lunch time collection for 4.30pm for afternoon collection or after tea

from 5pm onwards. This will assist your child in gaining the maximum benefits from the Nurseries and its Montessori teaching ethos.

Lateness

A few parents are continuing to arrive late or picking up their child late after the session has ended. If a child is left later than expected,

it is very upsetting for them and can cause problems with settling them into Nursery or separation fears from their carers. This can also

have a knock on effect for the staff and children remaining for the next session. Time and teaching staff are required to care for those

children left late after a session, stopping them from continuing with their duties elsewhere, or by delaying group time or the outdoor

safety of those children remaining in our care. Please can we also remind you that we close at 6pm (as our insurance states), we expect

everybody to be off of the premises by 6pm and not arriving at 6pm then collecting belongings and children, we have no insurance

from 6pm and this also has a knock on effect to our staff who are only paid until 6pm and who have their own commitments after 6pm.

So please can you ensure you have collected your child and you are off the premises by 6pm.

To clarify lateness charges, a verbal warning is given to late parents initially on their first late incident, which is then be followed up

next time by a written warning. A fee is charged for late parents who collect their child after 1:05pm or 6pm regardless of warnings.

Trays

Please remember to check your child’s tray weekly as some are beginning to over-

flow with lots of beautiful pictures that are better decorating your kitchen walls than

eventually going to waste in the bin.

Staff

There is a slight change in structure of Little Tots staffing. We are very lucky in that

Little Tots to have a very highly qualified and experienced team of staff that are for-

ever growing in experience and knowledge without a change of staff. They are com-

mitted to provide the best care possible within our setting.

Heather - remains as overall Manager / Director of Little Tots

We are pleased to announce that Sarah has now been given the title as Nursery Manager. Sarah is highly qualified and experienced to

oversee all the needs of the Nursery on a daily basis and will ensure the smooth running of the Nursery, offering a highly regarded

Montessori ethos to the Nursery. She is also there to answer any queries that you may have.

Becky has stepped up as Sarah’s deputy and is now our Deputy Manager. Becky will support Sarah and the staff in maintaining a

highly qualified team, caring for and teaching your children with enthusiasm and compassion.

Amanda is 3rd in Charge, on a term time basis – covering a Tuesday in holiday times.

Colette remains as SENCO and will cover if any of the above are off site/on holiday.

We welcome Sophie Brown as our work experience trainee. Sophie is working at Little tots on a

Monday, Tuesday and Friday until June. We hope you enjoy your stay with us and enjoy the Mon-

tessori way!!

We have a busy Summer Term planned, lots of planting and learning whilst having lots of fun!

If you have queries, please do not hesitate to contact Heather or a member of the team.

FOREST SCHOOL