February Newsletter 2023

February Newsletter 2023

We hope you all had a lovely half-term, the children have been settling back in very nicely!

Role-play shop: We have set up a lovely new shop for the children to play in, we need lots of things to sell so we are asking for donations of empty food packaging, including things like washing powder boxes, milk bottles, and coffee jars. If you have any spare recycling you would like to share with us, we’d be very grateful, and so would the children!

Tapestry: As mentioned on the previous newsletter, since their new update, Tapestry has become a massive issue at Preschool due to written uploads taking so much time. We have been advised by Tapestry that the best solution would be to replace all our android tablets with iPads, which is definitely not an option for us. We pay a lot of money to use Tapestry, and we want to keep it going, but we cannot justify the amount of time it is taking the staff away from the children. Ofsted no longer require settings to track children’s learning through observations, they prefer to see that the Key Workers know their children through interactions and extending their learning, however, we know that parents enjoy seeing their child’s experiences at Preschool. Therefore, from now on we will be uploading simple photo diaries for each child once a week, instead of written observations, and we will be uploading Facebook posts to our parent’s group daily. You will continue to receive termly reports and next steps for your children, and Key Workers are always available for a chat about your child’s learning. If you see a photo on Tapestry that you would like to know more about, simply leave a comment and your child’s Key Worker will give you more details about that activity. This change has already made a big difference to the amount of time Key Workers spend on tablets, and frees them up to be fully-engaged the children throughout the sessions. We hope you all agree that this approach is much more beneficial for the children, but if you have any questions please speak to Rachael or Debbie.

Easter Plans: Our annual Easter Bake-off will be on Wednesday the 29th of March, we will be inviting you all to enter some Easter themed bakes into our competition to win some yummy prizes! The entries will then be sold at the bake-sale at the end of the session. On Thursday the 30th of March, we will be having an Easter egg hunt and picnic! All the children will be invited to come along, and we will ask for a small donation to cover the cost of the eggs. More details will follow in the next few weeks.

Committee: We would like to welcome our new Committee member, Laura, who has completed all her registration checks and is now a fully enrolled member of the Preschool team, thank you Laura! Katie and James have also kindly joined the Committee, they will also be fully enrolled very soon! Thank you for joining the team! If anyone else is interested in joining the Committee, please email committee325@outlook.com

Phonics Sirjana has started phonics groups this week, the children are really enjoying finding the different letter sounds! Sirjana will be choosing children each week to find an item at home that starts with a specific letter, when it is your child’s turn, a slip will be sent home with a sound of the week to focus on.

Wow moments: Don’t forget to share your child’s wow moments with us! Wow moments are shared with the children every day at circle time, it’s so lovely to see how proud they are when their name goes on the board! If your child reaches any milestones, or does something that makes them (or you) proud, please do let us know by either putting a slip in the wow box, or by telling their Key Worker so we can celebrate their achievements with them.

Community walks: Our walks were due to start again this week, however, we have been short staffed for various reasons so it would not have been safe to take the children out without adequate numbers of adults to supervise them, and we must ensure there are enough adults for the children left at Preschool. Everything should be back to normal next week and the walks will begin again as scheduled.

Toys from home: Some of the children like to bring in items from home, this is lovely but it is causing some problems during the session and at the end of the day. This is due to children arguing over toys from home, toys going missing which slows down the end of day routine, and children becoming upset. Therefore, can we please ask that you avoid sending items in from home, especially now we have started phonics again and items will be coming in for specific purposes, which will cause even more confusion if other things are here too. We want your children’s precious items to be safe, but we cannot keep track or look after them, so if you must send a toy into Preschool, please encourage your child to keep them in their bag.

Capacity: We are now full to capacity every day, but we do have two spaces remaining on a Friday. If anyone would like to take an extra session on a Friday, please let Rachael know.

Dates for your diary:

Wednesday 29th of March: Easter Bake-off

Thursday 30th of March: Easter Egg Hunt & Picnic

Friday 31st of March: INSET DAY – PRESCHOOL CLOSED

Monday 17th April: Preschool open for Summer term

Thank you all for your continued support!

Preschool Team