March at The Little School House

Before the world went crazy over the corona virus we managed to pack in lots of fun activities in & out of the setting…

Each of our branches had a charity takeover week to raise money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The plan was to theme as many of the activities around bears, as the hospital is tying it in with the Bear Hunt that’s planned around the city over the Summer. During our chosen week we held a raffle (with some amazing donation prizes – thanks to all who contributed), guessing games to wind a prize and even took the children on a sponsored bear walk, as well as completing lots of bear-themed activities in their rooms with their friends. We want to thank all of the staff, children and parents for their support and donations for this fantastic cause. The week was very successful week and we raised over £800!!

We don’t think our annual celebration of World Book Day would be complete without giving the staff and children the opportunity to dress up as their favourite characters. We saw the likes of The Gingerbread Man, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and many more! The children loved taking part in reading their favourite stories and making up their own book character, although perhaps their favourite part was enjoying some of the yummy cakes and buns from our bake sale!

Our termly staff training session was held early in the month. Lisa and Anna (Area Manager and Quality Practice Manager) decided to base the first part of the session around a recommendation from our Ofsted inspection (January 2020); the report suggested that we should ‘build on the good planning for adult-led activities to ensure that all participating children are fully challenged.’ So we spent a portion re-looking at what the activities we’re planning to meet the next steps of the children, how to extend them for the more advanced children, what we provide in our areas of continuous provision and how to support the children in order for them to access and achieve things more independently.

We spent the latter half being introduced to a relatively new teaching strategy called ‘Word Aware’. This tool is designed to support practitioners in the provision of effective vocabulary development and it’s aim is to shorten the ‘word gap’ between children from different backgrounds. We discussed how we can implement the strands into our daily practice and how it will work best for the different age groups. We’re looking forward to putting all this into action once things are back to normal!

Our Pre-School Room went on a trip to Weston Park Museum and they used public transport to get to and from. This was a big experience for some of our children, who had not been on a bus before! They enjoyed learning about the different parts of Sheffield’s history and playing in their role play areas.  The children loved looking at the animals after enjoying a yummy picnic for lunch.

Now the weather is starting to get warmer, we’ve been enjoying more sensory activities and activities in the garden. The Baby Room have really enjoyed splashing and playing in the sensory tray with all of the water and bubbles – they had lots of fun splashing the staff too! It’s been great having picnic snacks and lunch in the garden with our friends, and made us very excited for the Summer weather!


That’s all from us for now; we look forward to resuming normal nursery life as soon as possible, but in the meantime, wish you all well – stay safe!

June adventures at Kingswood

Well to start with this month we are delighted to have welcomed back to the team some long standing staff members ……Emma Wilks has returned from her maternity leave, she will be back at nursery Tuesday’s – Fridays’s and will return to her post as Deputy Manager. We would like to thank Laura Standering for doing a great job in her role as Acting Deputy Manager. Leanne Cully has returned to Kingswood after her third child and a small break in childcare, we are really happy that they are both back on board!

The Pre-School children have embarked on our yearly train, tram and bus trip this month, this linked in brilliantly with both topics we have been following – transport and child safety week. The Pre-School children had an excellent and educational journey from nursery to Sheffield city centre and back again. The children went in small groups and travelled on a bus to Dore train station, then they caught the train into Sheffield, jumped on a tram from the station to a nearby bus stop and then caught a bus back to Kingswood. The children had a great time paying the transport drivers, collecting their tickets and learning about the different ways vehicles move across the city.

        

Pre-School has also held a workshop to celebrate Father’s Day. The children really engaged well and embraced the activities which were kebab making, vehicle junk modelling and den building. All feedback received was really positive and some lovely comments were made about our dedicated team and all the effort they went to in order to encourage parental involvement  in their children’s nursery day.

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Baby Room really enjoyed promoting healthy eating week by tasting lots of different fruits – watermelon, raspberries, strawberries, mango and many more. The Toddlers really got involved with healthy eating week too by growing, picking, chopping and eating their own radishes! They were very proud of their achievement, as you can see from the pictures.

 

  

The toddlers have recently had 3 new members join their group; we would like to introduce Guppy, Steve and Pedro, our goldfish. The toddlers are finding the experience of looking after them both rewarding and exciting. We gave the children the opportunity to ‘have their say’ when it came to naming the 3 newcomers . We displayed a ballot box outside toddler room and the children put their suggestions in, we then picked 3 names at random to confirm their new identities.

Parent’s Evening and School leavers Transition Evening were both a great success. They provided a lovely opportunity for all our parents to talk in a little more detail to the staff about their child’s development and next steps. We had a great turn out as usual and all our parents were happy with their child’s progress.

All in all, June has been an exciting, fun-filled month with plenty of learning, laughter and life experiences. We look forward to updating you next term with many more fun and educational adventure!