Nursery News 21st July 2025

NURSERY NEWS

21st July 2025 – Edition 380

Find out About:

A. Lost Property

B. Remember to put your younger children on our wait list.

C. School re-open dates for September 2025

D. Department for Education: Early Years Foundation Stage Nutrition Guidance

E. Choking Hazards.

A. Lost Property.

Our Lost Property will be emptied at the end of term, and any unclaimed belongings will be disposed of. Please look through the Lost Property boxes that are in the storage trolley in the outdoor Library area.

B. Remember to put your younger children on our wait list.

Please remember to add your younger children’s names on our waitlist. We are no longer able to give preference to children who have had brothers and sisters in our school. We look purely at how long children have been on our wait list for each termly cohort when we allocate spaces. Please encourage friends and family members to put their child’s name down as soon as possible, to have the best chance of being offered a space in the future.

C. School re-open dates September 2025

Monday 1st September School Closed Staff Training Day

Tuesday 2nd September School Closed Staff Training Day

Wednesday 3rd September School Open.

· Brand new families have been advised of their start date.

· Existing families should continue with their child’s current attendance pattern.

· Some existing families have increased their child’s sessions from 15 to 30 hours. These children will start on 3rd September.

D. Department for Education: Early Years Foundation Stage Nutrition Guidance

The Department of education has released a new document that we, as a Nursery School must take notice of, and comply with. It comes into force 1st September 2025.

Summary

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards that early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn, develop well and are kept healthy and safe.

From September 2025, we intend to include a new requirement in the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the EYFS that providers must have regard to this nutrition guidance. This means providers must take this guidance into account and should follow it unless there is good reason not to.

This guidance will support providers to understand how to implement the existing EYFS requirement that states: ‘Where children are provided with meals, snacks and drinks, these must be healthy, balanced and nutritious’.

Why this guidance is important

Providing healthy, balanced and nutritious food ensures that all children:

• Get the right amount of nutrients and energy they need while they are growing rapidly, which is especially important for children who might not have access to healthy food at home. This can help prevent children from becoming overweight or obese.

• Develop positive eating habits early on. Children’s early experiences with food can shape future eating habits. This can impact children’s long-term health including maintaining a healthy weight, and good oral health.

The early years are a crucial time to reduce health inequalities and set the foundations for a lifetime of good health.

There is some very good advice within this document. We do have a Willow Nursery School Nutrition Policy, but in light of this document we will update it. We may have to introduce new guidelines around foods that are brought into school. This will include fruit snacks, the content of Lunch boxes and birthday treats.

Food brought in from home

Having a food and nutrition policy in place and communicating this to parents and/or carers can help them to understand your regulatory obligation to provide healthy, balanced and nutritious food to children and encourage healthier food choices for packed lunches. It is important to ensure that food provided from home aligns with the healthy options offered by the setting, so that children receive consistent messages about nutrition.

I am suggesting that parents might like to read the document, so you can see the content of it, and understand the framework we are required to work within.

This is the internet address to take you to this document:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-nutrition

We will update you in the Autumn term of any changes made to our Nutrition Policies.

F. Choking Hazards.

Within the Nutrition Guidance above, there are many electronic links. I would like to draw your attention to one of these from the ‘Food Standards Agency’ regarding choking hazards and how foods should be prepared.

We will use this advice with regard to our packed lunch guidelines. So please have a look to familiarise yourselves with the advice.