Nursery News – 23rd June 2025

NURSERY NEWS

Monday 23rd June 2025 – Edition 376

Find out About:

A. Review of the Year

B. Late arrivals are becoming problematic.

C. What are the children learning about this week?

A. Review of the year

At this time of year, we carry out a big review of our school. In the last few days staff been talking to the Big Nursery children individually, to gain their views about their school, with regard to what they like, what they think they have learned and what they would like to see change. All school staff are busy filling in questionnaires too.

This information helps us to plan our areas for development next year.

I always ask parents for their views too at this time of year.

We usually ask just two questions:

1. Please comment about what we do well at Willow.
2. Please tell us one thing you would like to see at Willow that you would consider to be an improvement and/or development.

Please write a short email and send to office@willownursery.co.uk

If you wish your comments to inform my review, please send your email by the end of this week, Friday 27^th June. I will then compile all the comments and respond to them in a future newsletter, on Tuesday 8^th July.

B. Late arrivals are becoming problematic.

I explained last week how we admit children who are late. After keyworkers have gone inside the office staff are left to admit latecomers. I wrote:

When children arrive a bit later, after 9:00am, office staff will be putting lunchboxes on the appropriate trolley, escorting your child to their register area and marking your child in that register. There are 5 different rooms where children will be registering. A member of staff may only be able to bring in one child at a time. You may be asked to wait outside, until a member of the office team is able to open the front door and escort your child in.

Parents who arrive late, often just send their child in the front door and leave, unaware if office staff are available or ready to look after their child. From now on, I have asked office staff to make sure the school is secure before admitting latecomers. This means that office staff and myself will bring in the lunchbox trolleys, shut the front door and put the security lock on.

Staff will then bring in pupils one at a time. Parents will not be admitted. Parents will be asked to wait patiently, until their child is admitted.  We will look after individual children in a quality way, ensuring they have their belongings stored in the correct places, that they are seated with their Keyworker group, and their name is added to the classroom and lunchtime registers. This process may take 3-4 minutes per child.

These measures are necessary to ensure late arrivals are admitted safely and securely. We are experiencing a regular group of 8-10 children arriving ‘only just late’. These are not the parents who are travelling across town to do two school drop-offs.

C. What are the children learning about this week?

The theme this week is transport – land

Staff will explain to the children what the word transport means and that there are many different modes of transport. There will be a variety of different resources throughout the school, for the children to fully explore this topic. Staff will use these resources to expand the children’s vocabulary, they will explain that on land we can travel by car, train, bus, bicycle, motorcycle and on foot.

Our learning intention this week is for the children to talk extensively about things that are of particular importance to them. This means that they will learn to talk about people and things that are not present and that they will use language to share experiences and thoughts. This will be promoted by having discussions with the children, and encouraging conversations by asking open ended questions. Staff will often relate to the children as they talk about people and things that are of importance to them. These discussions help to build bonds between staff and children. Children are more likely to share more thoughts as their confidence grows.

We will focus on cutting skills this week and there will be plenty of books, magazines and paper for the children to cut. Staff will support the children in holding their scissors effectively to be able to make snips in paper and, for those that are able, to cut carefully and with purpose.