1st newsletter of the year - Pre-school and Islworth's January edition

Harvard Park Pre-School Isleworth: January Newsletter 2017 News from the Managers, Nicki and Tracey and Deputy Manager, Natalie – Welcome to 2017!

We hope you had a lovely break, Christmas and new year! It is lovely to see some of you using our EY log system to share you photo’s and observations with us. Keep it up. If you have yet to register or have not received your email towards your registration, please let Natalie know.

As you know we said goodbye to Danielle at the end of term, and we would now like to welcome all of the new children and parents/carers to our Harvard Park family.

This is a kind notice from our practitioners: When dropping off your child, please be mindful of their siblings who are outside. The weather is still extremely cold and if you need to have a talk with their key worker or a practitioner, please bring them inside with you. We know it may be an inconvenience to you to have to get them out, but it is still very cold outside.

We would also like to point out that Natalie Monica will now be working in both of our settings, offering key support to children and practitioners to help us get the best for and out of your child.

If you have changed your contact details such as mobile numbers or have moved house, please come to the management desk and change the details we have so we can suitably contact you.

If you are running late, going to be absent from the session due to sickness or are going on holiday, please inform us. We plan things such as outings around how many children are in on that day.

If we are waiting for you and you are not coming in, other children miss out. Please remember that we do close our gate at 8:45am. Please be on time.

Please make sure you are reading our parent’s notice board outside. We do try to send out as many reminders as possible via email, we have our monthly newsletter which outlines events that will be happening during the month and we have started to send emails on the EY log too. We had a few parents at the end of term saying they were unaware of the time change on party day. Please check the board, emails and we will pass as many messages as we can on verbally.

And last but by no means least, please may we remind you that we are a nut free setting.

This means we cannot accept lunches, snacks, cereal or treats which have nuts in. We have a practitioner who has an allergy to them. Thank you.

News from Natalie, Dee, Eva, Jeanna, Mandy, Lacey, and Amy: Welcome back and a happy new year! To kick start 2017, we would like to ask you to kindly replenish or remake your all about me boxes. You can add, take out or change things in there as we are sure you interests have changed, you may have been on holiday or there is something new you want to share with us.

For those of you who may be new to this; an all about me box is a box decorated by your child, and filled with things they want to put in. It could be a picture (copy of course) an empty packet of their favourite food, their toy car etc. Please make sure it is something that won’t be missed if they are misplaced while at the setting. Pop a list of items in there too. These boxes then stay at nursery an act as a language tool. They help a child settle in, open pathways to communication as it is

something familiar to them and help form bonds with adults and peers. We use them as a key part of our Let’s Talk Together programme. If you have any further questions, please ask Natalie Monica.

Our topic for this month will be all bout ‘Space and our solar system’. It is a topic which both children and adults get a lot from. We will be looking at our solar system within our rolling groups, introducing new language such as, for the younger ones – alien, star, moon alongside action words such as twinkle and zoom; for our elder ones, we will go into a little more detail such as- naming the planets, Astronauts, sphere, globe etc. We will also be using junk modelling resources to make our own helmets to explore the moon, creating moon sand and learning how to walk like spacemen.

It is lovely to see some of you sharing observations with us through the EY log. Please continue to do this, we show the children at pre-school and they are able to tell us exactly what they did during this time.

DO NOT let your children bring in sweets or chewing gum into the setting. We like to promote healthy eating and chewing gum is a choking hazard. Please check their pockets before leaving the house.

Due to a change in weather please remember to dress your child appropriately for the weather as well as bringing in a thick winter coat, hat, gloves and scarf. These needs to be labelled with your child’s name so they do not go missing or get mixed up with our spares. We do go outside in all weather and we occasionally go for a trip, therefore your child needs to feel as warm as possible.

Please take everything home at the end of term. If you have any lost property, please ask us.

If you have any old magazines, phone books or multi-cultural food packaging, before you throw it out could we have it for our home corner? We are developing that area to represent our homes a little bit more. Any form of contribution would be great.

Mission of the month: - To encourage your child to create their own planet. This could be a 3D model, a drawing, painting, anything they want to make. If they chose not to make a planet, encourage them to make something they want to bring in and show us. Entries to be in by Thursday 19th of January.

Just a few notes to start off the month of January:  If you have any girls clothing you are getting rid of or your child has grown out of, could you please consider donating them to us as we are running extremely low. Anything will be a big help to us.  Fruit donations: Thank you to all of you who are bringing in fruit. Please remember to avoid pineapple and Strawberries as we do have allergies within the setting.

Also, remember once you collect your child from their groups, they are your responsibility so DO NOT let them push the door handle to let themselves out. ADULTS ONLY!!!!!!

We would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Amelia, Luqman and Eva for this month. We hope you all have a lovely day.

This is a message from Smallberry Green School: DO NOT Park in front of or outside the school gates. You will get in trouble if they see you on their CCTV. Do not park inside the car park either; Harvard Park will get in trouble for this too. If the gate is open, the CCTV is still in operation and they will register your number plate, approaching you if you park in the car park.

Can parents please join our Facebook site as we are trialling our newsletters on our new site to save our trees!

Just type in Harvard Park Pre-school and Day Nursery into your search engine (i.e. Google) and we should pop up! We regularly update this page with pictures, messages and notices. We will of course print off a few copies for those parents who do not have access to a computer. We will also display a copy on our Parents Table.

Can parents please join our Facebook site as we are trialling our newsletters on our new site to save our trees!

Just type in Harvard Park Pre-school and Day Nursery into your search engine (i.e. Google) and we should pop up! We regularly update this page with pictures, messages and notices. We will of course print off a few copies for those parents who do not have access to a computer. We will also display a copy on our Parents Table.