Welcome to Term 3!
Welcome and back and Happy New Year! It’s great to have you all back ready for Term 3. It’s also fabulous to be welcoming new children and families to our Ilminster community this term. I try to send out a newsletter near to the beginning of each term so that you have any up-and-coming dates, you know all about what the children will be learning this term and to let you know about anything else that will be happening during the term.
We also have a fabulous (new) website! It has lots of useful information, including INSET dates for the whole year, access to our whole curriculum, and important policies.
There are also class pages, which we add photos to as much as we can. These photos are also featured on Facebook page (so long as we have permission from you).
Hope you all have a great term, Mandy Collier-King, Acting Head.
Govenors
The Governing Body would like to express their thanks to everyone who supported us during our recent OFSTED inspection. We were recently featured on Bristol Live news, sharing some of the best bits from our report. We were particularly pleased to be described as a nursery “at the heart of the community”.
The work of the Governing Body has been significant in the school’s development. If you would like to be part of this, please speak with the office.
We currently have a Parent vacancy as well as a Local Authority vacancy.
We would love to have you on board!
Welcome to New Staff
We are welcoming new staff this term. We have Zoe and Laura starting with us. Laura has started in Rainbows class; she is covering Emily’s maternity leave.
Zoe is joining Sun Room for the second half of the week. They will both be key workers.
We still have an SMSA vacancy. This really is a crucial role for the smooth running of each day. Please apply if you would like to join our fantastic team!
The Big Brush Club
We are finally launching this initiative this term! Many of you signed consent forms last term so that we can provide teeth cleaning at Nursery.
We have been provided with all the resources and training needed and hope to start next week.
There will also be a toothbrush and toothpaste for each child who has signed up to take home.
We hope to also sign up the new children who have joined us this term, so watch this space!
Family Link
Lucy is planning to set up a board outside of her room to share any information that we receive regarding the Children’s Centre and what they have to offer. Until the board is up and running, feel free to stop and ask her.
Lucy will begin some 1:1 parenting support work this term, following recent training. If you feel you may need this support, please pop in and talk to her.
Christmas Raffle
Thank you to everyone who entered our Christmas Raffle. As a result, we were able to fund new resources for the garden as well as play tents for the children!
Dates for your Diary
Monday 20th Jan: The Big Brush Club starts
Monday 10th Feb: Make a healthy snack week
Friday 14th Feb: End of term 3
Monday 24th Feb: Start of Term 4
Wednesday 2nd April: INSET day
Friday 4th April: End of term 4
Term 3 Curriculum
This term our Curriculum focus is “Make a healthy Snack”. The children will be learning all the skills needed to make themselves a healthy snack, including developing their knowledge of what”healthy” means. The children will be exploring all areas of the curriculum through this focus:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Talking about what keeps us healthy. They will also be developing their resilience to keep trying even if a job is tricky. They will also be exploring finding solutions for everyday problems that arise within their session.
Language Development: Learning new vocabulary linked to being healthy, with a focus on verbs e.g. cutting, rolling, spreading etc.
Physical Development: using one handed tools such as child safe knives to chop and spread, as well as developing scissor skills to snip paper. They will explore keeping their bodies healthy, including cleaning teeth.
Maths: Beginning to explore “subitising” skills. This means noticing and describing a small number of objects without counting them (similar to the skill of recognising the dots on dice).
Literacy: Talking about the marks they make with pens and pencils, differentiating between sounds e.g. through body percussion and voice sounds and telling familiar stories through play.
Expressive Art and Design: Joining in with songs that use whole body movements, exploring body percussion and exploring mixing paints to make new colours.
Understanding of the World: Talk about the changes they notice in the environment e.g. freezing/melting. Notice and talk about changes in food preparation.
Towards the end of this term, children will be making a healthy wrap independently! We hope that the children will be able to bring it home to show you….if they haven’t eaten it first! They will also bring home some instructions so that they can make them with you at home too! Remember to let them show you all their new cutting, rolling and spreading skills and help with some simple food prep tasks at home too!
We have leaflets that explain our termly curricular goals, as well as leaflets telling you all about our “Core Books” and how they support children’s early literacy skills. These are in reception and free to anyone who is interested. They include good ideas for supporting your children at home too.
Re-Launch of the Library
We have been fortunate enough to purchase £2,000 worth of new books to add and replace books in our library. We have also been able to use a donation from Kimmy at Kim’s Nail Bar to paint and reorganise the space. It is now looking fabulous! We will add some photos to the website shortly.
We are looking forward to the children using it again so that they can choose their own books to look at and share.