Nursery News 16th March 2026

NURSERY NEWS

16th March 2026 – Edition 403

Find out About

A. Term dates. Last day of Spring Term Friday 27th March 2026. School Re-opens Monday 13th April 2026 for the Summer term.

B. Role Play Linked to Our Core Books.

C. An Open School Event. Big Nursery ‘Phonics’.

D. Lost Property

E. What are the children learning about this week?

 

A. Term dates. Last day of Spring Term Friday 27th March 2026. School Re-opens Monday 13th April 2026 for the Summer term.

The last day of the Spring Term for all children is Friday 27th March. The Nursery is open for normal hours on this day.  School re-opens for the Summer Term on Monday 13th April.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind parents that if they look on our website www.willownursery.co.uk  and click on the calendar tab, you will be able to see  our academic calendar for 2025-2026 and 2026-2027.

As a school, we always follow the calendar that Central Bedfordshire Local Authority suggests, however this year 2025-26, each school was required to select their own 5 training days.

(Training days are when schools are closed to pupils, to allow teachers and support staff to receive training.)

Therefore, please be aware that Willow’s training days may be different to other schools in the local area.

 

B. Role Play Linked to Our Core Books.

We have been having so much fun in the last few weeks with the imaginative role plays the staff have been putting together. This group of children this year are really interested in dressing up in role and creating storylines. We’ve been looking at traditional tales, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Gingerbread Man, The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. All these stories are great for re-telling and acting out as they have lots of repeated refrains in the stories. Even children not using very much language will join in with ‘Run, Run, Run’, or ‘Huff and Puff. All children can access these stories in some way. We are moving on with some role plays linked to our Core Books. A few weeks ago we looked at the book ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea.’ We had role plays set up all over the school including outside!

 Next week we will be looking at the story of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’.

Mrs Patterson will transform Room 2 into an immersive role play experience. Children will listen to the story being retold, then experience walking through the long grass, the short prickly grass the thick oozy mud, the water of the river before arriving at the Bear Cave. They then find ‘A Bear!’ (One of the children dressed up.) The children get so excited with this activity. One of the best in our year!

 

C. An Open School Event. Big Nursery ‘Phonics’.

Miss Howe would like to invite all parents of Big Nursery Children to come in and watch your child take part in their phonics session, during week beginning Monday 23rd March. Sessions run at three different times throughout the week.

For your information:

Children who attend for 30 hours per week or 15 hours at the beginning of the week will have their group on Monday 23rd March at 1:00pm or 1:30pm. Children who attend for 15 hours at the end of the week will have their group on Thursday 26th March at 10:50am.

Sessions last around 30 minutes.

The school office will send emails to parents this week, inviting parents to attend on a particular day and time, as groups are based on your child’s attendance days and not their Keyworker groups. We try to offer a variety of Open School Activities both during the school day and in the early evening, hoping that parents might be able to attend some of them. We understand parents have different family and work commitments, so we do not expect all parents to attend. It is just another option….

 

D. Lost Property

We have accumulated a number of items of clothing in our Lost Property box. These items are outside in the Library area. There are three drawers in the top of a cabinet labelled ‘Lost Property’. If your child has lost an item of clothing in the Spring term: Please check to see if anything belongs to your child, and take it home. We will dispose of any unclaimed items at the end of term.

 

E. What are the children are learning about this week?

The theme this week is ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’

This week the children will be listening to We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. They will be exposed to lots of different ways to learn the story and then they will be encouraged to retell the story in their own way.

One of the main ways that the children are encouraged to retell the story is by taking part in a physical activity where they will walk through different sensory scenes from the book such as ‘splash sploshing’ through water, ‘squelch squerching’ through mud and ‘stumble tripping’ through a forest. It is a very interactive activity and always very popular with everybody.

We hope to spark the children’s imagination and promote lots of role play. Our learning intention this week is to be able to join in with repeated refrains and anticipate key events in rhymes and stories. There are many repeated refrains in this story and we will be encouraging the children to join in with them as we share this wonderful book.

Our 7 C’s learning intention this week is to be exposed to a wide variety of creative opportunities, which will be supported by the theme of the week. There will be many different ways for the children to express themselves and share their learning, including writing and drawing, and staff will monitor the children’s progress in this area as they work on their pencil grip and control.