Goldstone Crescent
Dunstable
Beds
LU5 4QU
Phone: 01582 662600
Email: office@willownursery.co.uk
Latest News
Nursery News 7th February 2022
NURSERY NEWS
7th February 2022 – Edition 251
Find out About
- Parent Consultations for Big Nursery – reminder
- Phonics Programme begins this week for the big nursery children
- Water Bottles
- Thank you for your donations!
- Half Term Break
- What the children are learning about this week
1. Parent consultations for Big Nursery – reminder
If you made a telephone appointment to speak to your child’s keyworker, here is a reminder of the day to expect your call…
Miss Howe – Monday 7th February
Mrs Cashmore – Tuesday 8th February
Mrs Patterson – Wednesday 9th February
Miss Skai – Thursday 10th February
2. Phonics Programme begins this week for the big nursery
Phonics at Grouptime….
(for those children who leave us in July 2022 to go to primary school )
This week, staff begin our phonics program delivering structured phonics activities at grouptimes. Children will focus on learning one new sound each week. Every Wednesday, we will send home a worksheet introducing the new sound to be practiced. We use the Jolly Phonics program. Each letter has a name, a sound and an action. The sheet we send home explains this and shows you, their parents the action to perform. Making a movement linked to a sound helps children to recall the sound. Please encourage your child to learn the new sound and action. Have a go at writing the letter shape and colour in the picture. Keep the sheets together, perhaps in an A4 ring binder. Learn the new sound each week, but also go over all the previous sounds.
Your children are still very young, so only do this with your child at an appropriate time and not for too long.
You need to present the activity to your child as a fun task that they should look forward to doing with you. ‘Little and often’ is a good way to learn letter sounds.
Information from Miss Howe regarding our phonics program:
‘Phonics’ is one tool children can use when they are beginning to learn to read and write.
The Department for Education (DfE) produced a phonics resource called Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics. This resource splits the teaching of phonics into six phases. At Willow, we work on phase 1 activities all the time. Phase 1 describes using activities such as storytelling and singing songs, rhymes, music, role play and listening games. This will give the children opportunities to listen carefully and talk extensively about what they hear, see and do. Phase 1 activities are designed to underpin and run alongside activities in other phases. Phase 2 is an introduction to more formal phonics work and involves teaching the children sets of letters in a specified order. The first set of letters to be learnt are s.a.t.i.p.n because these letters make a greater number of words than any other 6 letters in the alphabet. We feel that the children at Willow are ready to begin focussing on letter sounds in a fun and practical way.
What are we going to do?
- Each child will participate in 1 x 25 minute phonic sessions each week
- We are going to begin teaching 6 letter sounds, s.a.t.i.p.n. and will continue with one letter sound each week until the end of the summer term
- We will teach the children that all letters have a name, and that these letters make a sound. For example: the letter S makes the sound ‘sss’
- We will use a mixture of songs, games, tongue twisters, art, drama and movement activities to teach the letter sounds.
We will use ‘Jolly Phonics’ with the children. Jolly Phonics is the name of a program used to teach phonics. Each week we will:
- Tell the children a story, which includes focussing on the sound we are trying to teach.
- Teach an action to represent the sound
- Send home a picture (linked to the story) for the children to colour, and they can practise writing the letter which represents the sound.
For example: The ‘s’ story involves finding a snake which goes ‘ssss’. The action for ‘s’ involves making a snaking movement with your hand and forearm and saying ’ssss’. The picture to take home is a picture of a snake
Helping at home:
The picture your child brings home will explain to you how to make the action to represent the sound. Talk with your child about what they have learned at school. Learn the actions along with your child. Making the movement may help your child to remember. Have fun!
Phonics
What is phonics?
Phonics is the word used to describe the sounds the letters make. In simple terms, the word ‘cat’ can be read from its three sounds: c-a-t.
These are not the names of the letters as we say them in the alphabet, but the sounds these letters make. The word ‘thick’ is made up of three sounds: th-i-ck, where pairs of letters combine to make a single sound. Similarly, ‘rash’ is made up of three sounds: r-a-sh.
There are 40+ sounds in English but only 26 letters that are used to represent these sounds.
The five basic skills for reading and writing are:
- Learning the letter sounds
- Learning the letter formation
- Blending
- Identifying sounds in words
- Spelling the tricky words
When reading, children need to understand the meaning of the words. Before they can do this, they have to be able to work out what the words say. The phonic skill for this is to look at the letters, say the sounds and hear the words. This is called blending.
The main phonetic skill for writing is to start with the spoken word, then listen, identify and write the sound in that word. The ability to hear the sounds in words is called phonological awareness. For example, with the word ’bin’ if you listen you hear the sounds ‘b……i….n’. Then if you know how to write those letter sounds, you can write the word ‘bin’ without help. This is the opposite to the skill needed for blending.
The letters for the 42 Sounds of English
a ……ant, sand, caravan
ai……aim, aid, drain, (long a)
b……bat, bend, crab
c ……cat, cot, duck
d……dog, dip, sudden
e……egg, end, shed
ee……eel, creep, tree (long e)
f……fog, lift, fluff
g……goat, gap, digger
h……hop, hit, hill
i……ink, indian, drink
ie……pie, tie, die (long i)
j……jelly, jet, jumper
k……king, kind, kettle
l……leg, lost, shell
m……man, mill, shrimp
n……nut, nip, spin
o……orange, on, spot
oa……oak, oats, boat (long o)
p…….pig, pet, step
q……queen, quick, quin
r……run, rabbit, barrel
s…..sand, sun, twist
t……top, tug, mat
u…….up, under, lung
ue……due, Tuesday, cue
v……van, vet, give
w…..wind, went, swim
x…..x-ray, ox, flex
y……yell, yes, yellow
z……zoo, zebra, buzz
sh……ship, shop, wish
ch……chop, chick, much
th……this, then, with (voiced th)
th……thin, thick, thimble (unvoiced th)
ng……song, bang, string
oo……look, room, foot (little oo)
oo……moon, spoon, shoot (long oo)
ar……art, arm, start
er……kerb, stern, sister
or……order, corn, storm
oi……oil, ointment, spoil
ou……out, cloud,
3.Water Bottles
Just a reminder to label all children’s water bottles. It helps the staff to distinguish which bottle belongs to which child!
4.Thank you for your donations
Thank you to everyone that has brought in a box of tissues or some materials for our box modelling area. Please continue to save your recyclable materials for us over the half term break and bring them in on our return!
5.Half Term Break
The nursery will be closed for half term from Monday 14th February until Friday 18th February 2022. We return to nursery on Monday 21st February 2022.
6.What the children are learning about this week?
The theme in little nursery this week is The Gruffalo.
In Catkins, the children will be making Gruffalo rice crispy cakes with Mrs. Field. They will also be drawing and colouring Gruffalo pictures with a focus on pencil control and building on fine motor skills.
In little nursery, the children will be reading The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. They will be using playdough and other resources to create their own versions of characters from the story.
Outside, the children will be going on a character hunt. The children will talk about characters from The Gruffalo story and search for their pictures in the garden.
The theme in big nursery is keeping healthy.
In room 1, the focus will be on healthy eating and the children will take part in a shared read of Handa’s Surprise. The children will each have a book and will practise reading with an understanding that we read from left to right and top to bottom. There will be a range of other activities available that will build on fine motor skills, such as using scissors and threading string through pictures of fruits and vegetables.
In room 2, Mrs. Patterson will be looking at emotional wellbeing and encouraging the children to identify different emotions. The children will have mirrors to look at themselves and the different expressions they make; they will be able to paint these images using the easels.
Outside, the children will be focused on physical fitness and Miss Skai will set up an obstacle course. The children will be able to think about the effects exercise has on their bodies while building on their developing physical skills.
Nursery News 31st January 2022
NURSERY NEWS
31st January 2022 – Edition 250
Find out About
A. Parent Consultations for Little Nursery.
B. Parent Consultations for Big Nursery.
C. Request for boxes of tissues
D. Box Modelling
D. What the children are learning about this week
A. Parent consultations for Little Nursery – reminder
If you made a telephone appointment to speak to your child’s keyworker, here is a
reminder of the day to expect your 5 minute call…
Mrs Cashmore – Monday 31st Jan
Miss Gaffney – Monday 31st Jan
Miss Tyler – Tuesday 1st Feb
Mrs Field – Wednesday 2nd Feb
Mrs Brinkley – Thursday 3rd Feb
Mrs Watson – Friday 4th Feb
B. Parent consultations for Big Nursery
Just a reminder about Parent Consultations (on the telephone) to parents of children
in Big Nursery during the week beginning 7/2/22. Big Nursery staff will contact
parents, either at the front gate at the beginning or end of sessions, or by telephone
to arrange a suitable appointment time. Appointments will last no longer than 10
minutes. We only have one phone line so the consultations will be at the following
times:
Yellow Group, Speaking with Miss Howe
Monday 7th February 2022.
Yellow Group, Speaking with Mrs Cashmore
Tuesday 8th February 2022.
Green Group, Speaking with Mrs Patterson
Wednesday 9th February 2022.
Orange Group, Speaking with Miss Skai
Thursday 10th February 2022.
C. Request for boxes of tissues
We are running very low on boxes of tissues. We seem to have lots
of runny noses! We would be very grateful for any donations of
boxes of tissues for the children to use.
D. Box Modelling
We are running very short of recycled materials for our box modelling area. We would
be very grateful for any of the following that you can offer…
Boxes, not too big. The biggest boxes we like are cereal boxes.
Plastic bottle tops
Yogurt Pots, butter tubs and other plastic containers
Toilet roll tubes
Egg boxes
E. What the children are learning about this week:
What are the children learning about this week?
The theme in little nursery this week is winter and ice.
In Catkins, the children will be exploring different textures. There will be toys encased in ice, which
will become available as the ice melts. They will also be able to explore a tray of flour using their
hands and utensils to gain an understanding of the contrasting textures.
In little nursery, the children will have a winter wonderland theme where there will be lots of
different books for the children to look through.
Outside, Miss Gaffney will have an igloo tent for the children to explore and extend role play ideas.
Miss Gaffney will also be teaching the children to recognise amounts without counting, the children
will do this using natural resources such as twigs and leaves.
In the link area, Mrs Brinkley will support the children to create their very own Rainbow Fish collage
using a variety of art materials, including card and foil. The children have been reading this
wonderful story over the last week with Mrs Brinkley.
The theme in big nursery is people who help us – hospitals, dentists and opticians.
In room 1, Miss Skai will have a doctor’s surgery set up with an ambulance van for the children to
play in, extending role play ideas and prompting the children to take turns. She will also be playing a
hospital themed version of Kim’s Game, using medical equipment which will support the children in
learning the correct names for the doctor’s instruments.
In room 2, Mrs Cashmore will be supporting the children to create their very own Snellen Eye Charts
and glasses. These activities will focus on letter formation and improving fine motor skills. The
children will also have the chance to take part in some maths activities by giving a specific number of
eyes to aliens. There will be some aliens on the table with a number attached to them, this number
represents the amount of eyes they will need to be given.
Outside, Mrs Patterson will be celebrating Chinese New Year with the children. 2022 is the Year of
the Tiger and the children will celebrate in true style by moving through the playground with our
traditional Dragon head, which is a symbol of good luck.
Nursery News 24th January 2022
NURSERY NEWS
24th January 2022 – Edition 249
A. Find out About Parent Consultations for Big Nursery
B. Letters for Catkins children starting Big Nursery in September 2022.
C. Big Nursery Blue group begin Forest Schools
D. Mrs Davies Absence
E. What the children are learning about this week
A. Parent consultations for Big Nursery
We plan to offer Parent Consultations (on the telephone) to parents of children in Big Nursery during the week beginning 7/2/22. Big Nursery staff will contact parents, either at the front gate at the beginning or end of sessions, or by telephone to arrange a suitable appointment time. Appointments will last no longer than 10 minutes.
B. Letters for Catkins children starting Big Nursery in September 2022.
If your child is in Catkins Class, in Little Nursery, with a date of birth between 01/04/19 and 31/08/19 they will be eligible for their universal funded 15 hours in September 2022. Some families are entitled to 30 hours of funded nursery education if both parents are working. All children in this date of birth group will begin Big Nursery in September 2022. Mrs Davies will be passing out letters to parents this week, with information and forms to complete. Parents will have a choice of attendance options. Please fill in the forms and return these to the school office as soon as possible, by the 2nd February at the very latest.
C. Big Nursery Blue group begin Forest Schools.
Last week, Blue group began their program of Forest School activities. Mrs Brinkley leads the Forest School work and she explained to the group that they will be having a Forest School activity group every Wednesday at 9:00am, for the next 7 school weeks. One of the boys was a little concerned that this involved going off site, but Mrs Brinkley reassured him that all the activities would take place in the Catkins garden.
Big Nursery Orange group completed their Forest School tasks last term, and Big Nursery Yellow group will have their turn in the Summer Term.
D. Mrs Davies Absence
Mrs Davies is currently unwell. In her absence, Miss Howe will be taking over the running of the nursery school.
E. What the children are learning about this week:
The theme in little nursery this week is the shoe shop.
In Catkins, the staff will set up a shoe shop role play area. This gives the children a great opportunity to role play as a shopkeeper and customer while building on the children’s language and communication skills. Mrs. Brinkley will help the children get creative by using paint to create colourful footprint pictures.
In room 3, Mrs. Watson will have lots of old shoes for the children to decorate with a range of artistic resources. They will then be using their newly decorated shoes to practice drawing skills, the children will draw around their shoes and colour in the shoeprints that they have made.
Miss Gaffney will be planting daffodils in the garden with the children and talking about how the bulbs will change as they grow.
The theme in big nursery is people who help us / fire and police services.
In room 1, Mrs. Patterson will have the police and fire service role play area set up for the children to use. The children can use their imagination to become police officers or fire fighters. This will show that the children understand different occupations and the responsibilities of people in the community.
In room 2, Mrs Howe will be supporting the children with expressing their emotions through painting while listening to music. Miss Howe will encourage the children to think about which colours might express happy/sad or angry feelings and use these in their artwork.
Mrs Cashmore will support the children with building a dialogue while playing. They will do this by making their own walkie talkies and using these to role play as police officers and fire fighters. The activities in room 2, will support the children with different ways of communicating and expressing their feelings.
Outside, the children will be able to undertake some responsibilities of a fire fighter, such as rescuing kittens from trees. They will have different outfits and accessories to utilise, to immerse them in their role play.
Nursery News 17.1.2022
NURSERY NEWS
17th January 2022 – Edition 248
Find out About
A. Thank you for your Patience….
B. Parent Consultations for Little Nursery.
C.Being on time.
D. What the children are learning about this week?
A. Thank you for your Patience….
Thank you to all parents for your understanding last week, when I had to make the difficult decision to close the school. We as a staff team had just been overwhelmed by Covid. Five staff, including myself tested positive for Covid 19 over the Christmas break. I tested positive on the day I was due to get my booster, so I did spend most of the Christmas break feeling pretty unwell. I don’t mind sharing about myself, but as for the other staff, this information should be kept confidential.
However of those 5 staff, 3 of us were still quite unwell by the time we were due to return, even though we had completed our 10 day isolation. On return 3 further staff tested positive for covid on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th . Staff were still unwell not able to come back and further staff were going off sick. We have strict adult to child ratios which we must adhere to: 1:13 adults to children when a teacher is on duty, and 1:8 when a teacher is not on duty.
Saturday 8th I received notification that another member of staff had tested positive.
We did not have enough staff to open safely. The staff that were available had also been close contacts to those who were now isolating.
I felt the school needed to close, to reboot, to get well. My plan was that it we closed completely for this short period then we should be able to open fully again and look after all children. The firebreak would stop staff transmission.
It was completely the correct decision. Some of us are still not ‘right’ bet we are all here pulling together to provide the best education we can for our children during this pandemic.
As I write this letter on Monday 17th January, all staff are present.
B. Parent consultations for Little Nursery
We plan to offer Parent Consultations (on the telephone) to parents of children in Little Nursery during the week beginning 31/01/22. Catkins staff will contact parents, either at the front gate at the beginning or end of sessions, or by telephone to arrange a suitable appointment time. Appointments will last no longer than 5 minutes.
Parent Consultations for Big Nursery children will follow later in the term: more details next week.
C. Being on time.
We are finding that more and more parents are arriving late in the mornings and this is becoming increasingly disruptive to the registration routines of the staff and the children.
We have well established drop off and collection routines. If parents arrive on time then we can all be safely inside by 8:55am.
We expect Little Nursery to arrive for 8:45am and Big Nursery to arrive at 8:50am.
What happens at this time?
Keyworkers greet their children, enter nursery altogether, then go to the cloakrooms to hang up their belongings and wash their hands. Each keyworker group then gathers to have the register taken. In Big Nursery we have a very important part of the children’s learning in those first five minutes or so. Each week we use direct teaching to expand the children’s vocabulary or knowledge. We use flashcards or real objects to teach them something new. We drip feed the vocabulary/concept to the children every day for a week. Staff tailor the task to the ability of the children in their group, for example the oldest children can describe a 3D shape using mathematically correct terms, whereas the youngest children describe 3D shapes using everyday language such as ‘ball’ or ‘box’. We aim to stretch everybody. We have pre planned these themes to teach every week across the year, this week we have been learning to describe patterns and next week we are exploring vocabulary to do with our classroom focus of ‘At the Vets’. We have looked at colours, positional language, seasons, days of the week.
As we begin our day, and the children arrive, classroom staff are working directly with the children. It is disruptive if a Little Nursery practitioner has to leave the group they are settling to come back to the front entrance 2,3,or 4 times for individual children.
By 8:55am all classroom staff are with their children, and all children should be in. I know some parents are dropping brothers and sisters to school on the opposite side of town, and parents have told me when they first enrolled their child that they will be regularly late every day. We accept this. We also accept that even with our local schools of Hadrian Academy and Vale Academy that parents with older children cannot be in two places at once. However we are finding the number of pupils arriving late is growing, and we know some of these children are the only child in the family!
I know parents might feel it is easier to arrive late and drop their child straight in at the front door, but it is myself , the Headteacher or the office staff who are tasked with dealing with late arrivals , and we have our own important tasks to be getting on with. We expect 1 or 2 late arrivals, which I guess those parents who arrive late
would see 1 or 2 other families arriving late. On some days we have had 10 or 15 families arriving late, and sometimes arriving as late as 9:25am.
With each late arrival I have to take the child to the correct classroom, ensure their belongings are stored correctly add them to the register, add them to the lunch register, change the totals on the wall… how long does this take? Two minutes each child? 3 minutes?
Please help us by arriving on time, so the staff can begin all the fun activities we have planned for the children, without interruption.
D. What the children are learning about this week,
The theme in Little Nursery this week is sharing experiences.
In Catkins the children will be learning how to communicate through signing. The signs will help all children, especially those with little speech or English as a second language, to communicate with peers and adults. The program that staff will use, introduces two dolls named Zak and Zoe. Zak and Zoe will help the children to express their emotions using basic sign language.
In Little Nursery, the children will take part in a shared read of Maisy dresses up. They will be practising their ball skills outside with the basketball and football nets and in the link area they will be learning about mixing colours.
The theme in Big Nursery is people who help us – ‘At the Vets’.
In room 1 there will be a Vets Practice set up for the children to role play in as a Vet and look after the animals. Mrs. Patterson will have a variety of soft toy animals that the children can play with and take care of. This is a great opportunity for the children to share their own experiences with animals, be it at the farm, zoo or their pets at home.
In Room 2, Miss Skai will have a selection of resources such as the water tray, play dough and box modelling area for the children to investigate. There is always an area for the children to sing, dance and play instruments. Our musical corner is very popular and provides a great boost to the children’s confidence because they are allowed to be as creative and expressive as possible.
Outside, the children will be creating animal collages with natural resources, they will choose an animal and use glue to fill in a silhouette with leaves, twigs and grass etc. There will be the chance for children to experiment with symbols and mark making as Miss Howe teaches them how to create a tally chart. The children will hunt for
pictures of different animals throughout the garden, then they will be shown how to count their animals using a tally chart. The children will also be encouraged to use positional language to tell the adults where they have found each animal.
Willow Nursery Reopening
Dear Parent/Carer,
Willow Nursery School will be fully open from Thursday 13th January. Thank you for your understanding and patience at this time. Mrs Davies has spoken at length with Central Bedfordshire Public Health Advisory Team. They are totally satisfied that all cases within the school are community related. They also recognise that we had no other choice but to close the school to keep everyone safe. The finance staff will ensure that all monies will be refunded or rolled forward for people who pay for their child’s sessions.
Mrs Leigh Davies
