22 Street Lane Nursery - April 2019 Newsletter

April Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to our April Newsletter, and as always, a big warm, welcome to all the families which have joined 22SLN. We have had such a busy month down at 22SLN. We kicked the month off with St David’s Day where we explored the country Wales making our own welsh flags, dragons and daffodil pictures. We then celebrated Shrove Tuesday by making our own pancakes and decorating them with our favourite toppings. The children then had the opportunity to dress up as their favourite book character for World Book Day followed by a special visit from Leeds Library bus! Next, was St Patrick’s Day where we explored the colour green and went Shamrock crazy! We learnt how to Irish dance and made some very tasty Irish soda bread. We ended the month with Holi celebrations where we explored all things colourful and had delicious Indian lunch prepared by our Head Chef Chris. Lastly, we would like to thank all the guests who came to the nursery for our Mother’s Day Tea Party, the children were very proud to show you their nursery and all their lovely activities. With the lighter nights ahead, we have a fun filled April planned for the children…

Country of the Month: ENGLAND April Newsletter

This month we will be exploring our very own country England. The children will be celebrating St Georges Day, Easter and we will be celebrating the Queen’s birthday! We will be visiting our capital city of London and learn about the Royal family and their homes! At the end of the month, we will be having our very own 22SLN Royal Tea party! Did you know? The English people drink more tea (per capita) than anywhere else in the world.

Staff News: Employee of the Month goes to…

Congratulations to this month’s winners:

Hayley Fryer

Paige Yates

Jahleea Gottshalk

***NEW - Management Choice Awards*** 22 Street Lane Nursery have introduced a new voting process for our employee of the month. From 1 st April we will move to quarterly awarding, our new ‘Management choice awards’ will be judged by our senior management and involves recognising our staff for achieving excellence, and for the amazing work that our staff undertake each and every day. We look forward to sharing our Management choice award winners with you in July!

STAFF NEWS April Newsletter

NEW STARTER: Indi Kaur We would like to introduce you to Indi Kaur who has recently joined our Goslings team. “ My name is Indi and I hold a Level 3 qualification in Childcare and Early Years Education. I have a wealth of experience working in Nursery settings and as a Private Nanny. I have worked with many children including those with Special Educational Needs which I have enjoyed and found extremely fulfilling. My passion lies with children and I enjoy helping each child reach their potential to the fullest.” Indi is looking forward to getting to know the children and families at 22SLN.

NEW STARTER: Jessica Wheelwright A big warm welcome to Jessica Wheelwright who be joining our Ducklings as ‘Deputy Room Leader’. Jessica is currently a Deputy Manager at Giggles nursery and will be joining us on Tuesday 23 rd April. “I am a level 3 qualified nursery practitioner with 4 years’ experience within childcare working with 0-13 years. I am a caring, bubbly individual and I am passionate about watching children grow and develop. My goal is to make children happy and meet their individual needs. I am excited to be a part of 22 Street Lane Nursery and to bring my exciting ideas and experiences to the Duckling’s room!.”

STAFF PROMOTION: Chloe Powell Congratulations to Chloe Powell who has been promoted to Room Leader of our Ducklings room. Chloe has worked for 22 Street Lane Nursery for over 2 years and has already done a fantastic job of leading the room. Well done Chloe!

STAFF NEWS April Newsletter

STAFF PROMOTION: Deirdre Millar Congratulations to Deirdre Millar who has recently been promoted to ‘Assistant Deputy Manager’. Deirdre is a very strong, and passionate practitioner and we are looking forward to her joining the management team. Deirdre will still be leading the Cygnets room and will also be working in the office one to two days a week to support the management team.

STAFF PROMOTION: Bec Boxall Congratulations to Bec Boxall who has recently been promoted to ‘Deputy Manager’. Bec will be supporting Alex to help run all aspects of the nursery and she will be leading/managing the setting in Alex’s absence. Bec has a first class honors degree in Early Childhood studies. She has been working in the management team since November 2018.

NEWS NDNA NURSERY OF THE YEAR & HEALTHY NURSERY OF THE YEAR Thank you to every one of you that have submitted your votes to help us win the NDNA Nursery of the Year and Healthy Nursery of the Year awards. Voting for the awards has now ended and we received the following votes: Nursery of the year total votes: 121 Healthy Nursery of the year total votes: 76 We can’t wait to share our awards submission progress with you over the coming weeks.

NEWS April Newsletter

Easter Egg Donations: Leeds Women Refuge This year we will be collecting Easter eggs and donating them to the woman’s refuge for the children to enjoy. We think this is a lovely way for the children to learn about giving to others, we would be most grateful for any donations by Wednesday 17 th April . Thank you for your support.

Easter Egg/Bonnet Competition We will be holding our annual 22 Street Lane Easter Bonnet/Egg competition followed by an egg hunt on Thursday 18 th April . All children are welcome to decorate an egg/bonnet and there will be a winner for each room! We look forward to seeing the children’s creations!

Nursery Closure The nursery will be closed for Easter on Friday 19 th and Monday 22 nd April . We hope all of our 22 Street Lane children enjoy their Easter celebrations over the Easter bank holiday. We look forward to their return the following day!

April Newsletter

The children had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day! The children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite book characters and reading their favourite stories. We would like to say a big thank you to Leeds City Council for allowing the children to explore the library bus!

April Newsletter

St Patrick’s Day & Red Nose Day

Thank you for all of your donations, we raised a total of £71.90 !

We celebrated St Patrick’s Day by making our own Irish flags, exploring shamrocks and exploring the colour green, we even learnt how to catch a Leprechaun!

The children had a colourful day celebrating the festival ‘Holi’, the children dressed up in their colourful clothes and made colourful streamers to dance with. We explored with coloured sand to mark make and used brightly coloured paints to decorate our bodies! We made our very own Mango Lassi and enjoyed an Indian inspired menu of lamb Makhani and rainbow rice!

April Newsletter

Chicklets This month, the babies have enjoyed exploring a variety of messy play activities to celebrate all the events and have been very busy making some beautiful cards for Mother’s Day! To do this we used the children's hands to take a picture of a flower. The children have continued to display an interest in cars, messy play, books and music and bubbles. As the children have enjoyed these activities so much we decided to incorporate it into our new and updated display. The children have enjoyed finding pictures of themselves and their friends while looking at the new display. We have really enjoyed following the children's home interests at nursery too. We have done this through activities such as 'we're going on a bear hunt' which one child enjoys reading at home and by setting out activities with different sea animals as a couple of the Chicklet's have enjoyed a visit to 'The Deep'. If your child has any home interests, please let us know via tapestry or while dropping off/picking up at nursery so that we can set out activities for them.

CHICKLETS

April Newsletter

Ducklings The Ducklings have been continuing their cookery classes and have been baking yummy apricot and raisin flapjacks. Everyone got involved putting the ingredients in and stirring them around by using a spoon. They then rolled them into balls and put them on a baking tray so that they can be cooked in the kitchen and ready to take home! We have also been celebrating an Indian festival called 'Holi'. This involves lots of different colours (we used pink, purple, orange, red, yellow and blue). To celebrate this festival, the Ducklings got involved in a large-scale painting activity. It was so much fun! The children had chance to explore the variety of paints by using different mark-making tools to make marks on either the paper provided or themselves! Everyone got involved and had so much fun, plenty of smiles and giggles were shown, especially when they were painting each other! We also celebrated St Patrick’s Day by making a green smoothie, all the children took turns to cut the apple, pear and spinach independently promoting their fine motor skills and all did a brilliant job, we then added milk and mixed all our ingredients together. We then placed it all in a blender and watched our yummy fruit and spinach turn into a delicious green smoothie.

DUCKLINGS

April Newsletter

Goslings The Goslings have thoroughly enjoyed the month of March, we have reached out to many of the children's interests and evolved them into different approaches to learning. The children's love to scoop and pour has grown into posting, we have developed this further into various activities such as a posting tray using Lego, play dough posting using paint trays and using little pouches to fill with items such as spaghetti sticks. The Goslings have really enjoyed baking, we have been setting up various areas such as the outdoors, role play and messy play tables with different types of baking including real baking and role play. The Gosling have loved making healthy banana oat cookies and flapjack. The Sun has started to shine, and we have been enjoying a lot more outdoor and indoor water activities, if you could provide your children with plenty of extra clothing so that the children have something dry to change into too after the activities have ended.

GOSLINGS I

April Newsletter

Cygnets The Cygnets have had a very busy month; we have enjoyed learning about some of our favourite traditional tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. We have been using props to act out the stories as well as taking part in lots of fun activities such as making a basket for granny, baking our own bread, making porridge for the Three Bears and designing their own story masks! We have had much fun celebrating World Book Day, St Patrick's Day and Holi, as well as looking at our Country of the month Wales. Thank you to Kate (Rory’s mummy) for lending us some welsh story books and other welsh props! The Cygnets have been exploring their senses, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing and looking. The children have enjoyed many activities including making and tasting their own homemade pizza and flower arranging using their touch and smell.

CYGNETS

April Newsletter

Swans The Swans have been very busy throughout March and have had lots of fun celebrating a number of different festivals! We started by looking at our country of the month which was Wales, making our own Welsh cakes, and using a variety of media and materials to design our own welsh flags. After this we then celebrated St Patrick’s Day and Comic Relief, all in one busy but fun filled day. The children really enjoyed designing their own collage shamrocks, printing their own Irish flags using sponges, and drawing their own self-portraits wearing red noses using markers and colouring pencils! We also celebrated World Book Day, and the children came to Nursery in some fantastic outfits from some of their favourite stories, including Mary Poppins, Mona the Vampire and Willy Wonka. We then celebrated Holi, the festival of colour, and the Swans really enjoyed mark making in brightly coloured sand trays, using their fingers, paintbrushes and various other tools. As well as this, all the children were invited to come to Nursery dressed in blue and orange, and everyone made a fantastic effort. As baking has been another big part of our month this month, we even made our very own Mango Lassi for the celebration, and the children really enjoyed looking at the different ingredients we needed, measuring out the items carefully and then having this for their afternoon snack. We have also been focusing on Phonics again throughout this month, looking over all the sounds we have learnt and trying to blend and segment sounds, starting to read and write simple words. We have continued this learning through lots of sensory trays with different materials such as: pasta, noodles, shaving foam, salt and even coloured sand, challenging the Swans to write their names and other shapes or letters independently.

Swans

April Newsletter

Recipe of the Month

Ingredients • 2 kg leg of lamb • 1 bulb of garlic • ½ a bunch of fresh rosemary • 1.5 kg potatoes

• 1 lemon • Olive oil

For the Mint Sauce

1 bunch of fresh mint 1 teaspoon sugar

• • •

3 tablespoons wine vinegar

Easter Sunday Leg of Lamb Method

1. Remove the lamb from the fridge 1 hour before you want to cook it, to let it come up to room temperature. 2. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas 6 and place a roasting dish for the potatoes on the bottom. 3. Break the garlic bulb up into cloves, then peel 3, leaving the rest whole. Pick and roughly chop half the rosemary leaves. Peel and halve the potatoes. 4. Crush the peeled garlic into a bowl, add the chopped rosemary, finely grate in the lemon zest and drizzle in a good lug of oil, then mix together. 5. Season the lamb with sea salt and black pepper, then drizzle with the marinade and rub all over the meat. Place on the hot bars of the oven above the tray. 6. Parboil the potatoes in a pan of boiling salted water for 10 minutes, then drain and allow to steam dry. Gently toss the potatoes in the colander to scuff up the edges, then tip back into the pan. 7. Add the remaining rosemary sprigs and whole garlic cloves to the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, then drizzle over a good lug of oil. Tip the potatoes into the hot tray and place back under the lamb to catch all the lovely juices. 8. Cook the lamb for 1 hour 15 minutes if you want it pink, or 1 hour 30 minutes if you like it more well done. 9. Meanwhile, make the mint sauce. Pick and finely chop the mint leaves, then place in a small bowl. Mix in the sugar, a good pinch of salt, 1 tablespoon of hot water and the vinegar. 10. When the lamb is cooked to your liking, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes or so. Carve and serve with the roast potatoes, mint sauce and some seasonal greens.

April Newsletter

*ATTENTION* Important Information - Please Read

Car Park As you are aware, there are double yellow lines outside the nursery which have been put there for the safety of the children. Please can we ask that parents do not park on them, and also be mindful of parking over more than one space in the car park. As you can appreciate we have very limited parking, and so the car park can become very busy. High Temperatures & Fevers Please can we remind parents that children cannot attend nursery if they have a high temperature (over 38 ° C). If a child develops a temperature whilst at nursery, parents will be called to collect them, as supported by our policies and procedures. We can administer non- prescribed Calpol for a temperature, although we must first receive permission in writing. HMRC Additional Funding Code (3 & 4 year old - 30 hours) If you are eligible and in receipt of additional 3 & 4 year-old funding, look out for a prompt every three months from HMRC to reconfirm your details so that your eligibility can be re-assessed. If you do not do this, please note that we are unable to claim the funding on your behalf. Winter Clothing Please can you ensure that your child has appropriate clothing labelled with their name to play outside. Children can play out and explore in all weathers, but a warm coat, waterproof trousers, hats, gloves and scarves would be most suitable for Winter. Could we please suggest that your child have 2-piece outdoor waterproofs if they are toilet- trained, as it can be tricky for them to get them on and off. Thank you for your support.

April Newsletter ~ Housekeeping

Absence Please note that we are unable to swap days or offer an alternative day if your child is absent from nursery. We are now extremely busy and it is impossible for us to do this for all children. This is stated in our terms and conditions. Thank-you for your cooperation. Parents Suggestions We continue to welcome all feedback from parents. If you would like to make a suggestion then please post this in our ‘Parents Suggestion Box’ which is based on reception. Alternatively, you can speak to a member of staff. Drop Off and Collection Can we kindly remind you that we open at 7.30 a.m. and cannot accept children into the nursery before this time. We close at 6.00 p.m. and any parents that pick up after this time will be charged. Thank-you for your cooperation. Labels in Clothing To avoid items being lost, please can you ensure that your child’s uniform is clearly labelled including their coats, hats, scarves and wellies. If your child brings gloves to nursery we strongly advise for these to be attached and threaded through their coat to avoid any gloves going missing . Contacting the Nursery Please can we kindly ask parents to try and only call the nursery rooms if necessary. It can be very difficult for the staff to keep coming to the phones when they are trying to look after the children and take appropriate breaks. Please note if ever we have a concern we would always call so please be assured that they are having a good day unless we call you. Thank-you for your understanding. Wipes Please note that although we provide nappies as part of our offering, wipes are not included in this. It has been noted that lots of children are coming to nursery without nappy wipes. Can we kindly remind parents to ensure that there is always a supply available for your child. Your child’s key person will remind you when they are running low. Moving forwards, we will be charging £15.00 per month to any parents that fails to bring wipes.

April Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Friday 12 th April Vaisakhi Celebrations Wednesday 17 th April Easter Egg Donations: Leeds Women Refuge Thursday 18 th April Easter Egg Hunt/Bonnet Parade Friday 19 th April (Good Friday) Nursery CLOSED Monday 22 nd April (Easter Monday) Nursery CLOSED Tuesday 23 rd April St George’s Day

CONTACT: 03330 43 22 22 info@22streetlanenursery.co.uk 22 Street Lane, Roundhay, Leeds, LS8 2ET

ONLINE: www.22streetlanenursery.co.uk