Registered Charity No: 1023849
Newsletter February 2022
Welcome back to Pre-school. I hope you all had a nice break.
Focus for this half term: As we celebrate World Book Day on Thursday we will be sharing lots of our favourite stories and rhymes this first week back. We would like to invite your child to bring in a favourite book from home on any day this coming week so that we can share it with them at Pre-school. If you could just ensure it is named! We will also celebrate Pancake Day on Tuesday by decorating our own pancakes with different fruits to make a face like pattern and then eat them up for snack!
As we move into spring we are hopeful we will be able to explore our wooded area that we share with school, where we can look at all the new growth and changes related to the season. We will be pretending to be birds as we collect sticks outside to make nests with, using pegs for beaks (held in hands not in mouths!) We will be looking closely at a collection of spring flowers, naming them and looking at the differences between them. As March progresses we will be learning about the life cycle of a frog and making fabric rainbows. The children will also be taking part in a group spring flower art project using lots of different tools to add paint to a long strip of paper decorated with green stems. We are looking forward to this one! We will also be learning lots of new spring songs for our Spring Sing Along on Thursday 31st March. I will continue to send the planning out to you via email. The plans provide a guide to what we cover each week but we still respond to the children’s interests and needs on an individual basis.
World Book Day: We will be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday 3rd March. If your child attends on this day they can come to Pre-school dressed up as a favourite book character and they will be taking part in lots of different activities to encourage their interest in books and stories.
Spring Singalong: On Thursday 31st of March we would like to invite you to a ‘Spring Singalong.’ The children will be singing lots of spring songs and nursery rhymes for you. If your child does not normally attend on this day you are more than welcome to bring them in for it. We will begin the singing at around 9.15 am and numbers will be limited to two adults per child. It will last no longer than half an hour.
Weather: Could you please make sure that your child brings a warm coat, hat and gloves to Pre-school. We do try and get outside in all weathers and hopefully will be spending time in the woods as spring approaches.
30 hour funding codes: There were many issues with the 30 hour codes last term so could I just remind you that if you access this type of funding please do not let these codes lapse. If you confirm your status when asked to, in readiness for the summer term funding, all should run smoothly.
Covid-19: While those testing positive for Covid 19 are no longer legally required to self- isolate the new guidance states that, “if you have any of the main symptoms of covid-19 or a positive test result, the public health advice is to stay at home and avoid contact with other people.” The full advice is given in the document, Covid-19: people with Covid-19 and their contacts. We would ask that you adhere to this guidance if your child is unwell with covid like symptoms, at least for 48 hours to see how they are after that. If they are still unwell after 48 hours then please get them tested before they return to Pre-school. We do have lateral flow tests in Pre-school if you need to use one. I understand how difficult this is when children so regularly get colds at this time of year but I think if a common sense approach is used it would be helpful in preventing the spread of these bugs and virus’s around anyway.
We are now letting parents of new starters come into the setting to help settle their little ones. The system of the more established children being dropped off at the door works generally very well and it is what the children are used to. The advice from the local authority is still very much to keep on with the measures we had in place last half term so we will continue to operate this drop off system for this short half term and then review again at Easter. We will continue to keep the building well ventilated and clean thoroughly each day. We are no longer asking for masks to be worn, it is at your discretion, and you do not have to stand behind the rapidly fading blue line! If you want to come in and talk to one of us about your child at any time then you would be more than welcome to do that. We will also be planning a face to face parent’s evening early on in the summer term.
Caroline Bickerton Pre-school Manager
