The new year is zooming by - we have been busy welcoming in lots of new children. They are all beginning to settle well - the lowering of the age of admission has meant certain changes and staff are in the process of incorporating some of the ideas from Birth To Three Matters. Carol and Helen went on the introductory course for this and the ideas are being cascaded down to the rest of the team. All members of staff have been busy attending courses, learning Jolly Phonics (over lunch on Tuesdays!) and visiting other nursery settings. These visits are helping us to gain some ideas that we can incorporate in the new building. Our advisory teacher has arranged visits to Whitnash Nursery, Little Crackers and Welford-on-Avon Nursery. We have taken digital photos to help remind us of ideas of good practice and these will be used in our planning.

We have spent time at Playgroup looking at Winter Sports - making sledges with Model magic, painting skiers, playing hockey and making lots of things to decorate our role play area. It was great fun learning (or trying to learn) to control a ball with a hockey stick. The older children thoroughly enjoyed their trip up to Big School to play hockey in the outdoor classroom.

Occupations provided the opportunity to use lots of useful parents - thank to our nursing sister, police motorbike man, farmer, barrister and doctor. They have all been preserved for posterity - see the wonderful display in the quiet room!. We also wrote and posted letters in the post box, visited the butcher (always a great trip - thank you Mr Lewis), delivered babies in the role play area and tried to milk a cow. She was called Daisy and she gave us real milk!!!

We are just finishing off our topic on Under The Sea. The role play area has developed over the past few days in to a very exciting place. There is a real rocking boat which sails past sharks, lobsters and cuttlefish, a shipwreck, a huge octopus, lots of smaller ones, beautiful fish and a rather menacing shark! The mermaid which has recently appeared is beautiful - we used Molly to draw round to help us get the right shape.

We have been up to Big School for a Spider Day. The Playgroup children all enjoyed the time with Reception Class but were all a little disappointed that the ranger from Kingsbury Water Park didn’t bring any real spiders! We made some spiders with fir cones and glued webs with glitter. Thanks to all the staff and our helpers who worked very hard on that particular morning.