Spring Term News 2020!

Welcome to 2020! 

The children started the year off by learning about and celebrating Chinese New Year  on 25th January. The children participated in lots of different chinese themed activities such as Chinese food tasting and creating their own Chinese dishes within the role play kitchen-using real food, Chinese mark making, looking at Chinese numerals, creating the Chinese flag with different mark making materials and lots of other educational activities. The children had great fun and particularly enjoyed trying a variety of new foods! 

On 29th January it was National Puzzle Day and our Incredible Inventors children at our Cowper Crescent site were invited to Woodland View care home, which is situated a short walk away from the nursery, to complete some puzzles alongside the residents. The children took along their favourite puzzles and sat at the tables alongside the residents, working together to complete them . The children then had some juice and a biscuit before returning back to the nursery. This was a lovely outing and it was so wonderful to see the children engaging so nicely with the elderly residents. 

World Book day took place on Thursday 5th March and this year we decided to take it back to basics and re-gain the love of books for everyone involved! All three nurseries held a book swap, where we asked the children to each bring in a book from home to add to the book swap, the rooms then took it in turns to take each child to go and pick a new book to take home. The children really enjoyed this and couldn't wait to show their parents which book they had chosen! The staff and children also dressed up for the day as their favourite book character. We also read the staff's favourite story books throughout the day. 

This year has been very different for everyone as COVID19 struck! Two out of of our three nurseries had to shut down from April-June as the country went into lockdown. Our Turner Road site serves the NHS, therefore stayed open throughout to support the key workers. Lots of adaptions to policies and procedures were put into place to protect the staff and children and help to minimize the risk of spreading infection. The pandemic was a huge learning opportunity for the children, lots of discussions have been had with regards to how important hygiene is and why washing our hands needs to take place so often. The children have created lots of lovely rainbow craft to show our support to the NHS throughout this busy time. Although this has been a very different time for the children and staff we have seen such a wonderful sense of community with lots of treats being sent to the nursery for all of the staff that have been working throughout the pandemic and the hospital also providing us with lots of chocolate and relaxing treats. We will continue to educate and support the children as we move into the 'new normal'.

The Easter Bunny still came to the nursery to provide the children attending some yummy treats!