Welcome From Justine
Well it’s that time of year again when we have sadly lost all of our Pre- School Children.
Many have been with us since the baby room so this is a very sad time for us all. We wish them well as they move on to new things.
In September many children will be transitioning from Twos to Pre-school. On Friday 23rd August we will be having afternoon tea with children and parents. It will be an opportunity to speak to the Pre-school team and meet your child’s key person.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY – Friday 27th September – MacMillan Coffee Morning
Justine
UPDATE FROM SAFFIA
We have had a busy summer! It’s been great to see the creativity and excitement at the Leavers’ parties. It’s always sad to say goodbye to children and families, but amazing to see them step into the next stage of their lives.
Leaving and Staying
I was delighted to be able to attend the pre-school graduation. It was lovely to hear about each child as an individual. I was also proud to celebrate with you the amazing news that on 1st August, both Sally King and Melissa Wickham will have worked for Bristol Childcare for 20 years! We are very proud to have had Sally and Melissa on our team for so many years. They both bring a huge depth of experience and creativity to Mornington House and we hope they will be with us for many more years. Thank you to both of them for their dedication and commitment.
A new framework
Ofsted have produced a new framework against which we will be inspected from September. Whilst nothing will change for you or your children, in the background we are doing a lot of work to prepare for this! We are always looking for new ways to support you and your children and this summer have developed our libraries of books for you to take home and share at home, we hope you are enjoying this. Reading together is one of the best ways to help your child learn and develop and we love books at Bristol Childcare.
Another idea we are developing is a series of Core Books that we will be enjoying with all children at Bristol Childcare. Look out for baskets of these in the rooms from September.
If you like to do activities at home with your child, there are also age-appropriate ideas at this link:
https://hungrylittleminds.campaign.gov.uk/
Hungry Little Minds is a campaign set up by the Department for Education.
Please let us know what you enjoy through ParentZone on your child’s Timeline so that we can continue to extend any learning at nursery.
Environmental impact
We have also been auditing our environmental impact and have put together an environmental statement that you can read on our website under the About Us section. As a team we are looking at ways we can reduce our environmental impact, starting with simple things such as ensuring lights are turned off when not required and that we are recycling everything we can. Following on from the success of our bras upcycling, we are organising a collection of mascara wands which will be sent to a wildlife charity as they are perfect for using on small animals. There is a collection box in each nursery so please donate any used mascara wands that you have lying around at home!
PRE-SCHOOL GRADUATION
What a year it has been!
I can’t believe it’s time to start saying goodbye to our preschool children as they are ready to go off onto their new exciting adventure at big school! We will miss each and everyone one of you but wish you the best of luck for the future. Please come back and visit us and tell us how you are getting on in Reception.
Just as we say goodbye to the children leaving for school, we are also welcoming some new children to preschool. The children will start to transition into preschool over August with settling in sessions and get to know the routine, classroom and meet all the staff and children in the room. I’m looking forward to seeing what this next year will bring for everyone.
Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make the preschool graduation such a special and celebratory occasion! The slideshow was wonderful and such a testament to the stimulating and engaging environment you’ve all created at the Priory! You’ve all helped our children thrive! It’s lovely that they get to bring their mortar boards home. Rory is wearing his eating his dinner! And thank you for the lovely book, photo and certificate. These will be very special and significant momentos to take with us to Scotland to remember our Priory family by!
From Morven Beattie 25.07.2019
BABYROOM NEWS
We have been enjoying the sunshine and having lots of fun in the garden, watering plants, splashing in water and climbing apparatus.
We managed to visit a park using public transport, taking a picnic and exploring the new surroundings. We hope to carry out some more trips over the summer.
During inside play the babies have loved exploring the home corner so we have found opportunities to do some cooking and leave real food cuttings in the kitchen area for them to discover.
TWOS ROOM NEWS
The children in two’s room have been enjoying transport themed play.
The girls in the two’s room took this as an opportunity to go on the bus. We travelled on 2 buses to get to Blaise Castle Park. Whilst on the bus the children spoke about what they could see out of the window and what they needed to do if we want the bus to stop.
The children were so well behaved at the park and explored all the different equipment it had to offer. It was lovely to see the children outside of nursery environment and see them interact with the children in the park. Whilst on our trip we had a picnic which involved food we cooked and baked ourselves and we also had a yummy treat from the ice cream van, yum yum!!!
NURSERY NEWS
Bumblebees
Some of the children have been interested in bumblebees so I provided resources to create their own. We used paint and our fingerprints to form the body and then used cocktail sticks to create the lines across the body, legs and antenna. We then finished the bumblebees by adding wings using our little finger. Some of the children created a beehive around the bumblebees to keep the bees safe and create lots of honey.
Learning To Measure – Sunflowers
The children have been interested in sunflowers, how tall they can grow and if the sunflowers were taller than the children.
We did some measuring with our sunflowers in the garden and some research on our tablets to find out how tall they can grow.
Learning Outcomes:
• Sunflowers can grow up to 3 metres tall and heads can be as big as 30 cm.
•Painting and measuring the ones we bought from the shop
• We made comparisons between the plants we grew in our garden and the ones in the vase in pre-school room.
FAMILY PICNIC
The Priory team would like to thank all parents who made our family picnic in June a success.
Children and parents enjoyed a very bubbly atmosphere and had an opportunity to speak with other parents and build relationships with each other.
We hope you enjoyed the evening as much as we did.
A trip to “We The Curious”