Welcome to Term 2!
I love this term! First come the amazing autumn colours. The children love to explore the leaves, pinecones and conkers. They use them to make pictures, prints and collages. After Autumn comes the excitement of Christmas! We will be planning lots of lovely experiences for the children and will even be inviting you to join us. Please see “dates for your Diary” for details.
Despite all this excitement, I do have a bit of a sad announcement. This will be Carolyn’s last term with us! It’s hard to imagine Ilminster without her. She has been a dedicated member of the team for over 20 years!!! Carolyn has been a tireless advocate for our children and families who have additional needs. She is truly loved member of the team and adjusting to life without her here will be tough! I am sure you join us in saying a huge thank you for everything she ahs done for the children and families during her time here.
We have successfully recruited a new Assistant Head who will be joining us in January 2026. Caroline will also have responsibility for the SENCO role. She is really excited to get to know everyone in the New Year.
Mandy, Acting Head
Our next Challenge
As mentioned in the previous newsletter, there are new statutory guidelines for food and nutrition for children who attend Early years settings. This means, that with your help, we can focus on helping children to learn to make healthy choices.
Last term, we smashed our target to encourage children to only drink water or milk when at Nursery. We really appreciate your help in achieving this. We were also able to provide a wide variety of fruit and veg for the children at snack time thanks to Operation Community Hampers!
Our next challenge will be to focus on providing only one sweet treat in children’s packed lunches each day. This would be a choice between a biscuit bar, a slice of cake or a yoghurt.
A child’s tummy is actually the size of their fist! This means that along with the snack we provide them, they only need a small lunch provided. To help reduce their intake of sugar, we are asking you to help us with the next challenge of only providing one small, sweet treat each day. Together we can smash this target too!
Governors
We have a Parent Governor Vacancy. If you are interested in being part of our amazing Governor team, please stop me at the gate or speak to one of our admin team in the office. We would love to have you on board!
Christmas Raffle
We are looking for donations of unused toiletries, biscuits, chocolate or small toys on excellent condition to make up some hampers to raffle this year. Anything we raise goes towards a gift for each room from Santa. Thank you so much!
Self-Help skills
This term is the ideal opportunity to teach your child the “coat trick”. Lay the coat on the floor in front of them with their feet at the hood end. Encourage your child to put their arms in the sleeves and then flip their coat over their heads…..as if by magic the coat sleeves slide on their arms, and they find themselves wearing it! A brilliant trick to make them feel proud and develop their independence. They may need a little help with the zip, but if you can show them how it’s done…they’ll manage that too with a little practice!
Family Link Worker
Many of you already know our fabulous Lucy. She works with both families and children to support them in any way that is needed. She is often at the gate in the mornings so please come and say hi.
This year she is planning to run the Nurture programme, set up a Parent/carer feedback group, work with children using sand therapy as well as offer a listening ear at any time. If you are not sure where to find here, please ask at the office.
Dates for Your Diary
Tues 18th and Thur. 20th November: Parent Engagement event: Spider making workshop.
Tues 9th and Thurs 11th Dec: Christmas Jumper Day
Mon 17th and Friday 21st: Christmas Parties: Star/sun
Tues 16th and Thurs 18th Dec: Christmas Singing for all and parties in Rainbows/Raindrops
Wednesday 17th December: Sun and Star Sensory Singing
Fri 19th December: End of term: at 11.45am (half day)
Mon 5th Jan: Back to school
Wed 14th January: INSET day
Term 2 Curriculum
This term our curriculum focus is “Learn a Nursery Rhyme”. The children are all learning to remember and say “Incy Wincy Spider.” They will be exploring this Nursery Rhyme in lots of different ways and learning new words from the rhyme e.g. “water spout”. The children will also be exploring all areas of the curriculum through this focus.
They will be joining in with rhymes and actions, using one handed tools to make and create things, making their large marks with pens, pencils and paints. They will be using their senses to explore natural materials, understanding taste, smell, touch and describing what they see. They will be continuing to explore groups of things, able to recognise groups of three without even counting! We call this “Subitising”.
On Tuesday 18th and Thursday 20th November at 2.15pm we would like to invite parents to join us for a spider making workshop. We will provide all the resources that you need to make a spider to take home with your child. You can then use the spider to help your child to retell the nursery rhyme or to play with the spider and act out “climbing up the water spout!” We would love to see you there!
Website
When you have a moment, check out our website! We have had Tom from ‘Chaos Created’ this week to take lots of photos of all the lovely learning the children have been doing. He’ll be uploading these soon.
You’ll also have the chance to see our fantastic library space and the new room to expand our two-year old provision.
We also add photos from the classrooms as regularly as possible so you can see what the children have been learning each term.
If you know of any families with two-year-olds that may be looking for a Nursery space. Please direct them to our website. Thank you.
The Importance of Play!
This year we will be looking closely at the importance of play for children’s learning and development. We all know how much children love to play but we are enjoying finding out just how absolutely crucial it is for children to grow up healthy, happy and learning! Play is the most crucial tool needed for brain growth! The part of the brain responsible for play, is actually in our primitive brain. This is the part of the brain responsible for our most basic needs, for example food and sleep! The fact that Play is in this part of the brain emphasises just how crucial it is to us!
Physical play is crucial to bone growth as well as loads of well being chemicals such as oxytocin. This means its crucial to our health as well as out ability to learn. Getting outside to run, jump and climb will ensure your child is developing just as they should. We are also learning that playing with you has the most benefit of all! So put down those screens and get outside and enjoy playing together! Have fun!