2020

January 2021 at The Little School House

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Firstly, may we wish you all a Happy New Year – what a year 2020 was! It provided us with many challenges that none of us could ever have imagined; two national lockdowns, closing our doors to many children and some of our staff being furloughed to name but a few! I think we can all agree we are more than happy to see the back end of 2020!

With that in mind, we have welcomed 2021 with open arms and look forward to the relaxing of restrictions in good time. During January, we spent a lot of our time outdoors exploring our local environment. We are extremely fortunate to have Graves Park on our doorstep and take full advantage when we can. Here are some pictures of our Baby Room & Toddler children walking though the park and into the woods. They used their senses to talk about the different noises they could hear and used the opportunity to practice their running skills, considering their speed while they were at it!

The month of January also brought us lots of lovely snow. It’s a fantastic learning opportunity for the children and we were lucky enough to have many occasions outside experiencing the temperature, texture and different experiences it brings. The children enjoyed making some fantastic structures; snowmen and snow fairies among others! But most of all, the amazing fun of sliding down the hill – such a simple process that brings such joy both to them doing it and to us observing them.

Our loose theme through January was ‘All About Me’ and our Pre-School children spent time drawing self-portraits. There was discussion about the facial features we all have and how, despite that, we are all different. Here are some of our self-portraits for you to see:

We’re looking forward to Valentine’s day and pancake day in February, and sharing more of our Little School House adventures with you all soon :)

Welcome to Riverview September 2020!

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Firstly, I would like to say a big hello from us here at Riverview. We are the fifth branch to be added to the Early Years Care and Education family! We first opened our doors back in February, only to have to close them again in March when the dreaded coronavirus caused the national lockdown. We then re-opened our doors in June and have been welcoming new families through the door ever since, adding employees along the way also. We’re now a staff team of 10 and the number of children attending grows by the week! It’s a real pleasure seeing the setting grow. Both myself and the Deputy previously worked at our branch in Dore, so know what it’s like to have a bustling nursery, and now we’re lucky enough to be running our own!

So, what have we been up to at Riverview so far? Over the past couple of months, we have been exploring our environment, and looking closely at ‘the curiosity approach’ and loose parts. We have really enjoyed developing our outdoor areas and have been investigating den-building, doing our own growing, and focusing on our gross motor skills and physical development by improving our balancing skills for example.

We are even growing our own tomatoes. How exciting.

Inside the building, we have enhanced our loose parts theme and really focused on the interests of the children and extending their learning with what they have shown fascinated with.

We have really enjoyed role play activities and making our own pizzas.

Throughout the past few weeks, we have taken great pleasure in looking after our own caterpillars, who then spread their wings and flew off as beautiful butterflies

That’s all from us for now. We’re really happy to be here and look forward to filling you in more in due course.