Nursery News 20th October 2025

NURSERY NEWS

20^th October 2025 – Edition 387

Find out About:

A. Important dates, a reminder.

B. Parent Consultations

C. Clothing for Winter Months.

D. Box modelling

E. Queuing Outside School

F. What are the children learning about this week?

A. Important dates, a reminder.

Mon 27^th October 2024 to Fri 31^st October 2025: Autumn Half term – School Closed

Wednesday 5^th November and Thursday 6^th November-School Photographer to visit.

B. Parent Consultations

Little Nursery will be having their Parent Consultations this week! Parents have made appointments with Keyworkers, here are the times staff will be speaking to parents on the phone, as a reminder:

Monday 20th October Miss Cashmore’s Red Group Consultations, 5 minute telephone consultations between 3:15pm and 3:30pm

Tuesday 21^st October Mrs Chiriac’s Red Group Consultations. 5 minute telephone consultations between 9:30am and 9:45 am

Tuesday 21^st  October Miss Allen’s Little Yellow Group Consultations. 5 minute telephone consultations between 9:50am and 10:50am

Tuesday 21st October Miss Gaffney’s Green Group Consultations, 5 minute telephone consultations between 3:15pm and 4:10pm

Each appointment lasts only five minutes. Please help staff to remain on time.

C. Clothing for Winter Months.

The staff have asked that I write about appropriate clothing for the children during Winter months…

Winter is coming and conditions are becoming generally wetter and colder in the Nursery gardens.  We go outside every day, in all weather conditions, so please make sure all children are appropriately dressed. A warm winter coat is important, preferably with a hood. We need children to learn to become as independent as possible with regard to their coats. At home, please encourage your child to put on their coat themselves. We know nearly all the Big Nursery children have the ability to do this, but they often ask for help. Please try to teach them to fasten their coat themselves.

Please can we ask that you do not provide ‘All In One Snowsuits’, as they are particularly difficult to get on and off. Staff do not have the time to assist children with these. Even in winter we have free flow play where children can choose to move from inside to outside as frequently as they wish, so throughout the day a child may have many occasions where coats are put on and taken off again.

Mittens are easier for children to put on themselves, rather than gloves. We do not mind helping the children to wrap up warm, because they love to play outside. Children enjoy the outside space even when it is freezing!   Just remember to label mittens, hats and gloves with your child’s name so we can send them home with the correct child at the end of the day!.

Now for inside school….       

Our school is generally warm, we set our classroom thermostats to 21 degrees C. So for the majority of the year the school is comfortably warm.

However, unlike your homes, we have a lot of outside walls in each classroom and lots of windows. Our doors to the outside areas, situated in Room 1 for Big Nursery, and in Room 4 for Little Nursery are open for the majority of the day to allow for continuous free flow play. So, when weather temperatures outside begin to drop, it may feel a little cooler inside school. We would suggest sending your child to school in warmer clothing than they would need at home. We would always suggest adding layers, so children can adjust what they wear.

Parents may not be aware that staff act similarly to a child’s parent when checking a child’s wellbeing. We do act if we think a child is too hot, or too cold, and adjust clothing accordingly.

When we have extreme winter temperatures, we do limit how long we spend outside. We close outside, to maintain warmth inside, and allow shorter play periods outside, making sure no child gets too cold.

D. Box Modelling

We are running very short of recycled materials for our box modelling area. We would be very grateful for recycled materials that the children can use to create models.  Children love boxes, but not too big please. The biggest boxes we can store are cereal boxes. Tiny boxes are useful, or unusual shapes.  Plastic bottle tops make good buttons and wheels. Yogurt pots, butter tubs and other plastic containers are interesting to glue together, but please ensure they are clean. Toilet roll tubes become superhero cuffs, covered in foil. Egg boxes are great places to glue coloured tissue.

E. Queuing Outside School

A parent has asked that we add a note to our newsletter, to ask parents if they could try and queue near to our fence and leave space on the path for others to pass.

We know it is very busy outside in the mornings and evenings. We know some families visit more than one school, and the majority of our parents have to get swiftly off to work, so we ask that parents are considerate of each other.

I do sometimes suggest to parents that it may be easier to walk along the path over the road, before crossing to join their colour group queue.

We encourage our pupils to be polite and show kindness within our school community. We know our Willow parents are just as supportive of each other, and can work together for positive outcomes. You are a nice lot!

F. What are the children learning about this week?

The theme this week is keeping healthy. This week the children will be learning about how to make healthy choices and explore the importance of hygiene and exercise. Staff will be encouraging the children to go outside and be physically active.

Staff will explain how important it is to stay hydrated throughout the day, especially when exercising and getting hot. Staff will model lots of language for the children, so that they understand the meaning of words such as ‘hot’, ‘thirsty’, ‘tired’ etc. After lots of movement, the staff will encourage the children to think about how they feel by asking questions like ‘are you puffed out?’ or ‘is your heart beating faster than normal?’, and they will explain that these are the effects that exercise has on our body.

We will also be learning about oral hygiene and how important it is that we look after our teeth. There will be lots of activities to show the children how to brush their teeth properly and staff will talk about visiting the dentist and making healthy food choices.

We will also be focusing on scissor skills. The children will learn how to use scissors safely and effectively. We will be providing lots of cutting opportunities to upskill our children and encourage them to cut appropriate materials such as paper, card and boxes in the creative areas. Scissor skills are tricky to master so we aim to provide as much practice as possible.