Goldstone Crescent
Dunstable
Beds
LU5 4QU
Phone: 01582 662600
Email: office@willownursery.co.uk
Nursery News 17th November 2025
NURSERY NEWS
17th November 2025 – Edition 390
Find out About:
A School Photographer.
B. Walk in the Dark event
C. BBC Children in Need.
D. An Open School Event: For Big Nursery Green Group Parents: Basic Skills. A reminder
E. Open School Event: For Big Nursery Children ‘Music Time’. Week beginning 1st December
F. What are the children learning about this week?
A School Photographer.
All orders for school photo’s should be returned to the school office by today.
B. Walk in the Dark event.
Thank you to all the families who joined us for our Walk in the Dark event last week!
It was very dark and in the garden which made it all the more exciting.
We praised all the children on Friday, as they did not play on the climbing equipment in the dark
The event was very well attended- with 88 people signed in! It is one of the staff’s favourite events during the school year. We hope you enjoyed it too.
C. BBC Children in Need.
Friday 14th November was Children in Need day. Miss Gaffney shook her little red box with a picture of Pudsey Bear on the front, to make a collection for the Charity.
We raised £85:00
D. An Open School Event: For Big Nursery Green Group Parents: Basic Skills. A reminder.
Mrs Patterson’s Blue Group parents have been invited in to observe a 30 minute reading/writing activity on Wednesday 19th November.
An invitation letter was sent out last week to Blue Group parents advising the time of their child’s group. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.
E. Open School Event: For Big Nursery Children ‘Music Time’. Week beginning 1st December
All children in Big Nursery participate in five planned group times per week. Throughout the year children will participate in groups such as: Storytimes, Big Books, Oxford Reading Tree, Theraplay Sunshine Circles, Music Time, Phonics, Maths Stories, Dance, Number time. We usually offer these activities in blocks of 10 or 20 weeks across the year.
For example children will have one 25 minute music session per week for 10 weeks. The sessions are carefully planned, to increase children’s skills and abilities with music, week on week, building upon what they have learned in previous weeks. For ‘Music Time’ the staff received tuition from the DeCapo organisation, and we then worked together to plan music sessions around the resources they provided us with.
We would like parents to come in to school and see how we teach your children. Throughout the year we are going to invite parents in to school to join in/observe our grouptimes.
We would like to invite all Big Nursery parents to join us for ‘Music’ time. Each parent of a child in Big Nursery will receive an email tomorrow detailing the date and time of the Music session that you can choose to attend, during week beginning 1st December. If you would like to join your child to participate in our Music Activity ‘Pigs on Holiday’ then please just turn up at the date and time specified and you will be made very welcome. There is no need to book. Sessions last 25 minutes.
F. What are the children learning about this week?
The theme this week in nursery is ‘Keeping Ourselves Safe’
Staff will teach the children about staying safe as an overall theme but teaching will include road safety, using equipment safely, stranger danger and maintaining privacy when changing or using the toilets.
Throughout the nursery, the staff will be encouraging the children to be as independent as possible in all areas. They will be supported where needed, but encouraged to practice getting changed by themselves, put their hats, coats and gloves on to go outside and to be independent with toileting needs. These are important steps for the children to take to become independent and school ready. As the children learn to do these tasks for themselves, they will be reminded of the importance of keeping themselves safe.
When changing, we encourage the children to take off and replace underwear as swiftly as possible, so their genital areas are exposed for as short a time as possible. We encourage similar privacy when children are using the toilet, ensuring children know that there should be only one child in each toilet cubicle.
It is very important that the children understand how to keep themselves safe and to understand that some parts of their bodies are private. We will be using the NSPCC guide on PANTS to explain in age appropriate terms, please see the attached link: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/advice-for-families/pants-underwear-rule/
There will be lots of safety talk in the nursery as the children will learn the significance of staying safe while on the roads, in their homes and out in public. They will learn about the importance of wearing seat belts in cars, crossing roads with adults, holding our adult’s hands when walking and not talking to strangers.
Our 7 C’s learning intention is for the children to be able to solve problems in different ways. To support the children to achieve this goal we will encourage them to talk to us about their problem. Once a problem has been shared, staff will help the children to consider different possible solutions. As the children start to become critical thinkers, it will become easier for them to make decisions that support their needs.
