Nursery News 24th November 2025

NURSERY NEWS

24^th November 2025 – Edition 391

Find out About:

A. School Photographer.

B. Food Allergies and Snack-time.

C. What are the children learning about this week?

A School Photographer.

The School Photographer has collected all photo orders.

We will let parents know when photo packs are ready for collection.

B. Food Allergies and Snack-time.

We currently have a very high number of pupils with food allergies in our school.  The staff want to do their very best to keep all our children safe.

The website ‘Anaphylaxis UK’ describes an Imperial College London study, that found  food allergies are most common in young children, with 4% of those under 5 affected.

Currently in our school we have 42 children who are our 2026 Leavers. Of these we have 6 children who have food allergies. This is 14% of these children.

In January we have 41 children who will be our 2027 Leavers. There will be 4 children with food allergies. This is 10% of these children.

So in total we will have 10 children with allergies, out of 83 children, so this equates to 12% of our pupils. This is 3 times the average rate (compared to 4%).

We have pupils who are allergic to milk, as well as all kinds of fruit. The staff have considered a variety of options, but the only outcome we are happy with, in terms of risk, is to discontinue operating snacktime.

In this way, the only food that will be offered to your child to eat during the school day will be food you provide in your child’s lunchbox, to be eaten at lunchtime.  We are very aware of allergies at lunchtime, and work hard to ensure children only eat their own lunch.

As a parent group you have been wonderful at providing fruit, but we are asking that you no longer send in fruit donations.

As for milk, the Nursery Milk scheme provides all children under 5 years old, who attend an eligible setting for 2 hours or more, a 189ml (1/3 pint) carton of milk, each day free of charge.

We want to assure parents that we want to continue with the free milk scheme. We will provide cartons of milk, on a trolley outside, near to the queue at going home time, for children to take home a carton of milk each if they would like one.

We may have to adjust the amount we order each week over the first few weeks to meet demand.

We recently suggested to parents to send in ‘Birthday Fruit’ to help celebrate their child’s birthday, but unfortunately we will no longer be able to celebrate in this way.  We do make a fuss of individuals on their birthday, or very near to their birthday if it happens to fall at the weekend or in the school holidays. We have an iced (fake) birthday cake with candles on. We light the candles and the class sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the child, before the Birthday Child blows out the candles, and then chooses a birthday sticker with their age on it.

I hope you can understand how important it is that we keep children with allergies safe. There is a sliding scale of reactions to food allergens from mild to life threatening. We want all our pupils to be safe and well.

C. What are the children learning about this week?

The theme this week is shop role play.

It will be an exciting week in Nursery as the children will have shop role play spaces set up in different areas. The role play areas will be adapted to suit the children’s different stages of development and staff will tailor the teaching areas to suit the needs of the children.

Some children will have a greater knowledge of what happens when we go shopping, or when we order items online and get them delivered to our houses.

Other children may have a simpler perception of shopping, where they might go to a shop and put items in their basket. Staff will use these teaching opportunities to incorporate the children’s prior knowledge of what happens when we go shopping and add to them as they model different scenarios. They will give visual and verbal prompts to the children to expand their role play and communication skills. Children will learn how to build on their imagination, using real life experiences that they have had with their families.

Role play opportunities such as this are perfect for supporting the children with learning good manners, children will be reminded that when we buy thing in shops, sometimes we have to queue and wait for our turn to pay. It is also a good time to remind our children that we should always try and remember our manners and say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ to all people that help us, including shop keepers.

There will be lots of opportunities for the children to expand their skills through play, as they write shopping lists, interact with other children and recall familiar experiences.

Our learning intention this week is to learn familiar songs, for example pop songs, songs from television programmes, nursery rhymes and songs from home. To achieve this outcome, there will be lots of musical activities and opportunities throughout the nursery. As the children choose and share their favourite songs and rhymes, they will encourage others to join in, improving their social skills and boosting each other’s confidence. This learning intention allows the children the freedom to express themselves in a supportive environment and the opportunity to find out if they have any favourite songs in common with their friends.