Nursery News – 20th April 2026

NURSERY NEWS

 Monday 20^th April 2026 – Edition 406

Find out About

A. Summer Term Challenges

B. Summer Term Opportunities

C. Holiday forms and pupil absence.

D. Allergen reminders.

E. Chickenpox in school: Update.

F. What are the children learning about this week?

A. Summer Term Challenges

Summer is our busiest term at Willow Nursery School. Our numbers increase each term from September around to July and the school steadily fills. We have had thirteen new families joining us this term, bringing the total number of pupils using the school to 94 children.

This means that we have a lot of children to take in safely at the beginning of their session, matching them to the correct staff and room base. We also have to ensure children are matched to the correct carer at going home time.

So, to help us greatly, please be on time wherever possible. (We appreciate parents cannot be in two places at once if other siblings attend other schools.)

The staff collect their children in a particular order. Please, if you arrive a little late, be patient and a staff member will invite your child in when someone is available to take them to the correct classroom and mark them into the register. If you are a Little Nursery family, and the Big Nursery children are being admitted, please wait in the Little Nursery queuing area until the Big Nursery children have gone in. If Little Nursery families arrive late, all the Little Nursery Staff are already very busy working in Little Nursery, settling in the children.

Please help us to keep the queues moving steadily.

Please leave adequate space at the front gate for families to drop off and move away from the front gate.

We are trying very hard to release children at the end of the session promptly.                                        These times of coming and going are called ‘transition times’, where we have to move children around the school. Transition times have to be carefully managed and it takes all the staff in school to manage these times safely. Some children are nervous of transition times, particularly new children. Some children become upset when it is time to go home.  It may take us a few weeks to find a successful routine to escort the children out as efficiently as possible.

Please ensure all lunchboxes and drink bottles are named. It is difficult to find a child’s drinks bottle quickly when bottles are not named.

B. Summer Term Opportunities

The Summer term is when the school can use the inside and outside areas to their full potential. We try to move many of the inside activities outside. As the term goes on we offer painting and craft activities outside, and provide lots of water play. Mrs Patterson and Miss Gaffney have already been painting outside with the children, and Miss Gaffney has helped children to make huge cardboard butterfly wings decorated with different coloured pieces of cellophane. As the ‘butterflies’ were flying around, there was a feel of carnival outside!  Sometimes a change in the environment can stimulate some exciting play.

C. Holiday forms and pupil absence.

We are at the point in the year when some families begin to take holidays. If you have a planned holiday during term time, please ask a member of staff for a holiday form. We ask that you fill in this very short form so that we can update attendance registers correctly.

Please can we also remind parents that if your child is absent for any other reason please telephone the school office and let us know. The school telephone does have an answering machine which is regularly monitored, so do please leave a message letting us know the reason for their absence and again we can update registers.

D. Allergen reminders.

When we induct new children to nursery we review all our information regarding all children’s allergens. Obviously we work very hard to ensure children eat only their own food provided for them in their lunchbox. We ask that parents do not provide any foods in lunchboxes containing nuts.  Nuts are found in peanut butter, wafers, chocolate spread, chocolate crepes, cookies etc. The nature of these sticky nut spreads means that the allergen can be transferred from children’s hands to other surfaces, such as tables, chairs, doorknobs, toys etc and can then be touched by another child who may transfer it to their hand and then their mouth. This could lead to anaphylaxis.

E. Chickenpox in school: Update.

Last week we had 10 cases of chickenpox across the school. Our prediction is that it will continue to circulate for a few more weeks.

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

The theme this week is Handa’s surprise

This week the learning intention is for the children to be able to respond to both formal language used to describe shapes  and common shape names. To support the children with this, the staff will be teaching about shapes using a variety of resources. There will be shape sorting and inset puzzles, magnetic shapes and picture boards, drawing opportunities and hammer and pin boards. Staff will model age appropriate language to teach the children about the shapes that we see in our everyday environment, there will be lots of opportunity for the children to practice their shape recognition as the week progresses and staff will encourage this by playing games, reading books and singing songs.

We will also be reading the story of Handa’s Surprise, which is a tale of a little girl that wants to give a fruit basket gift to her friend. She meets lots of animals on her journey and when she meets her friend, the fruit has been eaten and there is an entirely new surprise for Handa to give to her friend. The children will be encouraged to think about the similarities and differences between themselves and the characters from the book. They will pay attention to all the little details in the pictures and share what they have noticed.

Staff will share a Handa’s Surprise story sack with the children and encourage them to act out the roles of Handa, her friend and all of the animals from the story. This has always been a popular story at Willow and hopefully the children will enjoy retelling it to you at home.