22 Street Lane Nursery - April 2024 Newsletter

Newsletter April Play • Discovery • Growth

April Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome to our April Newsletter, and as always, a warm welcome to our families who have recently joined us. Things are looking brighter with the warmer days ahead, the beautiful spring flowers and some sunshine these past few days. We're also looking forward to longer days now that the clocks have changed! The children at 22 Street Lane have had a very busy March including celebrating St. David’s Day, World Book Day, World Wildlife Day, Mother’s Day, St. Patrick's Day, Red Nose Day, Global Recycling Day, World Down Syndrome Day, the Holi Colour Festival and our annual Easter Bonnet and Egg Hunt! We have lots to look forward to throughout April starting with Eid celebrations, followed by Vaisakhi festivities, Bicycle Day, Earth Day,

Passover and St. George's Day! To find out more, please read on...

April Newsletter STAFF NEWS

Welcome to Ella Bentley! We would like to give a warm welcome to Ella, who will be joining our Bank Staff team. “I have always centred myself around creativity and finding the fun in anything, working in child development could not be a better option for someone like me. I worked In a nursery in London for nine months and I think children have the BEST imagination ever, and I love being a part of the development journey a child takes when growing up. I am also a musician so love teaching my skills and having lots of fun and learning through music.”

Country of the Month, April 2024: Egypt Throughout April, we will be exploring Egypt as our Country of the Month! We will be exploring Ancient Egypt, the Egyptian pyramids as well as other Egyptian customs and traditions.

St David's Day Celebrations On Friday 1st March, we celebrated St. David’s Day and all things Welsh! We learned about the national emblems of Wales, such as the daffodil and leek! We also learned and explored a series of Welsh themed tuff trays too.

April Newsletter NEWS

Fun on World Book Day The children and staff had lots of fun celebrating World Book Day. Everyone came dressed up as their favourite characters and loved taking part in lots of fun and exciting activities relating to their favourite books!

Mother’s Day Stay and Play Sessions Thank you to all of our lovely mummies and other special people who attended our Mother’s Day Stay and Play Sessions last month. We hope that you all had as much fun as we did!

April Newsletter NEWS

St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations Everyone at 22 Street Lane Nursery had lots of fun celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! The children enjoyed painting their very own shamrocks, going on a leprechaun hunt in the garden and creating their own rainbows with pots of gold at the end! Oli, our Head Chef, also cooked a delicious Irish lunch consisting of slow cooked Irish beef stew served with caraway soda bread, followed by a yummy Irish apple loaf and custard.

Going ‘Back to Front’ for Red Nose Day 2024 The children took part in lots of activities linked to Red Nose Day, exploring themed tuff trays and creating their very own red noses using paint, pom-poms and even play dough! The children also took part in ‘Back to Front Day’ and it was great to see all of your outfits! Thank you so much for all of your generous donations, we raised a total of £244.15 for Comic Relief.

World Down Syndrome Day 2024 The children all came into the nursery wearing their craziest, funkiest socks - linked to the campaign “lots of socks” to end the stereotypes often linked with people who have Down's Syndrome. The children enjoyed learning all about the wonderful campaign, designing their own socks using a range of paints, colours and materials and exploring themed tuff trays!

April Newsletter NEWS

Holi Colour Festival Celebrations The children enjoyed learning about Holi, the Festival of Colour! We had lots of fun exploring some wonderful and very colourful tuff trays containing rice, paint and pasta! The children also enjoyed participating in some large scale mark-making using spray cans, paintbrushes, tissue paper and large pieces of paper.

Eid Al Fitr: Wednesday 10th April Eid al-Fitr is a religious holiday that occurs at the end of Ramadan. The meaning of Eid al-Fitr, translated from Arabic, means 'the feast of the breaking of the fast'. Eid al-Fitr officially begins once the religious authorities have confirmed the sighting of the new moon. Approximately 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide will mark Eid as the sun sets and the moon rises on the last day of Ramadan. We will be celebrating Eid al-Fitr with a delicious feast cooked by our chef Oli! We would love to see your Eid celebrations on Tapestry.

Vaisakhi Festival Celebrations: Friday 12th April This festival marks the Sikh New Year and Harvest Festival and is celebrated by Hindus and Sikhs alike. The colourful and energetic celebrations involve singing and dancing, chanting hymns and processions throughout the town. The traditional Bhangra folk dance is becoming more and more popular. The children will be listening to traditional folk music and may also give some traditional dancing a go. If any families have any clothing, decorations, traditional meals or photographs they would like to share with us, we would love to see them and help support the celebrations.

April Newsletter NEWS

Join In On Bicycle Day: To celebrate Bicycle Day, the Swans and Cygnets children are welcome to bring their bikes into nursery! Please can you ensure that all children have a helmet. When dropping your child at Nursery, please leave their bike in the Baby garden, where the Tipi is. The gate will be open from 7:30am 9am for your access. Please ensure you then drop your child off in their room as normal, by coming through the main door at Reception. Cygnets: Thursday 18th April Swans: Friday 19th April

Earth Day Festivities: Monday 22nd April In support of World Earth Day, we will be teaching the children about the importance of looking after our world, such as reducing plastic and recycling.

Passover: Monday 22nd - Tuesday 30th April Passover is a Jewish festival lasting eight days, which links to the biblical story of the Jewish people escaping from slavery in Egypt. During Passover, families will hold a ‘seder’ night on the first and sometimes second night of Passover. A seder night is a religious service set around a dinner table, where everyone will eat, pray, sing, and read stories from a prayer book called a ‘Haggadah’. A number of traditional foods are also eaten during the festival, including Matzah, gefilte fish and chicken soup. The children will be learning all about Passover and will have the chance to make their own Matzah crackers, listen to some Israeli music, and design their very own seder plate using a range of resources. We will also be trying some traditional foods too.

May Newsletter Showcasing our new Summer Menu!

As the warmer months are quickly approaching, we would like to share our summer menu with everyone! We've tried to include as many of your suggestions as we can. We hope that you like it! If you would like to request any of our recipes, please email Alex at alexandra@22streetlanenursery.co.uk and we would be more than happy to share these with you. See the full menu on our website: https://www.22streetlanenursery.co.uk/healthy-eating/summer-menu/

April Newsletter May Day Bank Holiday: Monday 6th May

We just wanted to remind parents that 22 Street Lane Nursery will be closed on Monday 6 th May for the May Day Bank Holiday. We will also be closed on Monday 27 th May and Tuesday 4 th June for the Spring Bank Holiday and our Summer Team Training Day respectively. Please make a note of these dates in your diary. We hope all our 22 Street Lane children enjoy their bank holidays and we look forward to their return!

April Newsletter

Dish of the Month

Banana and Oat Muffins

See our past selections on: 22streetlanenursery.co.uk/dish-of-the-month/

Ingredients

• 2 bananas (the riper, the better) • A handful of banana chips • 225g self-raising flour • 150g oats • 225g caster sugar • 225g butter • 4 eggs • 2ml vanilla essence • Spices, such as cinnamon or dried ginger • Chocolate chips (Optional)

Method

1. Mash up your bananas in a mixing bowl, then add your spices and set aside. 2. In a separate bowl, whisk your soft butter and caster sugar to a nice consistency. 3. Add your eggs and mix well, then sieve the self-raising flour into the mixture. (For better results, use an electric whisk.) 4. Add your pre-mashed banana mixture to the mix and stir it in. 5. Preheat the oven to 180/200C and line your muffin trays with paper muffin cases. Carefully spoon the mixture in and pop a banana chip on top of each of them. 6. Bake for 15-20 minutes until they are risen and firm to the touch. Check it’s cooked through by inserting a skewer in the middle until it comes out clean. 7. Leave the muffins in the tin to cool for a few minutes, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

April Newsletter Chicklets Room News

The Chicklets have had a jam-packed March! We have had lots of celebrations such as World Book Day, St. Patrick's Day, St. David's Day and World Down Syndrome Day - where we have explored lots of different colours and even worn our craziest socks. Everybody dressed up as their favourite book characters for World Book Day and came to nursery with back to-front clothes for Comic Relief. Some of our Chicklet mummies also joined us at the nursery for lots of fun for our Mother’s Day Stay and Plays! Recently, the Chicklets have become more interested in messy play activities and have enjoyed taking part in large-scale activities, such as painting, gloop and cooked spaghetti. With this newfound interest, we hope to be able to ‘get messy’ and offer the children more sensory experiences in the coming weeks. As we look forward to the warmer months ahead, we are planning on taking the children on lots of trips to the park and out into the local community. We will be exploring the signs of Spring, such as blossom blooming, bees buzzing and bird nests. April is going to be so much fun!

CHICKLETS ROOM

April Newsletter

Ducklings Room News

The Ducklings have had a fabulous March! The Ducklings loved inviting their mummies to our Stay and Play sessions to celebrate Mother’s Day. Some of our lovely mummies joined us for some yummy scones and activities, such as planting sunflowers, messy play trays and making our mummies fridge magnets. We hope that you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Recently, we have been creating a ‘Diverse Dishes’ book that is proudly displayed in our Ducklings Room. As the children love cooking in the role-play area, we thought it would be a nice idea for our home learning this month to create a scrapbook filled with pictures of diverse foods the children have eaten or new foods which they have tried. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the home learning task in our ‘Diverse Dishes’ book, it is lovely to see the children being so adventurous at home. In support of ‘World Down Syndrome Day’ we enjoyed lots of messy activities based around the Down Syndrome awareness. It has been lovely to see all the odd socks and bright-coloured socks that the children wore. We explored lots of painting activities and even decorated our odd paper socks talking about the different colours we were using and trying to name them all! The children have been able to take a closer look at our new arrival of baby chicks, which are in our Swans Room. The Ducklings felt confident to say “hello” and understood to be quiet, so they weren’t scared. Some of the children were brave enough to stroke and hold them. Well done Ducklings!

DUCKLINGS ROOM

April Newsletter Goslings Room News

It has been a busy few weeks in the Goslings Room! We have enjoying dressing up, reading new books, and exploring new things. We started off with World Book Day which was such a fun day for the children to dress up as their favourite character and bring in books of their choice from home. We had children dressed up as dinosaurs, fairies, tigers, and astronauts just to name a few! The Goslings have shown lots of interest in books such as ‘The Gruffalo’ and ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ over the past few weeks, they enjoy the suspense when turning each page and are so excited to do the actions, such as walking through the mud and the river! We have even enjoyed a few activities inspired by these books using different textures which has been a great hit. Moving on, as the Country of the Month has been Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, the children have been busy decorating shamrocks and enjoying Irish music! We also dressed wearing our clothes back to front to celebrate Red Nose Day and managed to raise lots of money for a great cause. For Mother’s Day, we have been busy making cards using flower petals and card with glue. We also enjoyed a Mother’s Day stay and play, by with lots of fun activities and yummy sandwiches and scones. We would like to say a big thank you to all the parents and grandparents for taking part and spending time with our Goslings!

GOSLINGS ROOM

April Newsletter Cygnets Room News

We had a lot of celebrations throughout March. We started with our World Book Day festivities, where the Cygnets enjoyed dressing up as their favourite book characters and sharing their favourite books with their friends. They also made their very own bookmarks and acted out the story of 'We’re Going on a Bear Hunt' in the big garden and at Roundhay Park. The Cygnets also celebrated St. Patrick's Day by dressing in green making and Irish shamrocks with a variety of materials. We also learned an Irish dance and read a story about a leprechaun; the Cygnets then enjoyed a hunt for gold in the Big Garden using a handmade map! To support Red Nose Day, all the Cygnets dressed up in red and enjoyed activities such as exploring the red tuff tray, making silly faces of us and making a big red nose with play dough. We also helped to raise awareness of Down's Syndrome by wearing odd socks to the nursery. To celebrate Holi, we did all the colourful activities like a rainbow-themed tuff tray, mixing colour powder and making pictures with tissue paper. As the weather is getting warmer, the Cygnets really enjoy their time in the Big Garden during the day, even after tea. We can’t wait to have much more fun and more different activities in the big garden in the coming weeks!

CYGNETS ROOM

Swans Room News April Newsletter

We’ve had so much fun throughout March in the Swans Room! The Swans have enjoyed doing lots of fun experiments to celebrate Science Week. The children enjoyed mixing colours using pipettes to transfer the primary water colours and mix them together to make secondary colours. We explored using our senses by taking part in a smelling experiment. We had five paper cups which we placed five different objects in and the children enjoyed using their noses to guess what it could be. Finally, we loved making a volcano. The Swans then took it to the garden and added two ingredients together to make a big explosion. For World Recycling Day the children enjoyed learning about what recycling is and had the opportunity to sort out different recycling such as plastic bottles, metal and cardboard boxes. The children enjoyed learning about different ways we can help the planet and created their own world using blue and green tissue paper. The Swans had a lovely time celebrating World Down Syndrome Day. The Swans have made their own funky socks in the creative area using lots of bright colours, which we then hung in a washing line. We spoke to the children about how we are all different and how we all enjoy different things too. Finally, we had some very special guests in Swans throughout March, which were some chicks. The Swans children got to witness the lifecycle of a chick as they arrived when they were still in their eggs. The children were very excited as they began to hatch! The Swans then loved getting a chance to hold the chicks and take amazing care of them before they went to live on the farm!

SWANS ROOM

April Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Wednesday 10 rd April Eid Al Fitr Friday 12 th April Vaisakhi Festival Celebrations

Thursday 18 th & Friday 19 th April Bicycle Day - Bring your bike to the nursery! Monday 22 nd - Tuesday 30 th April Passover Tuesday 23 rd April St George’s Day Monday 6 th May May Day Bank Holiday, Nursery CLOSED

April Newsletter

*ATTENTION* Important Information - Please Read

Car Park Please can we kindly ask that parents ensure they are only parking in a single car parking bay. As you are aware, we have very limited space, and it is very busy a peak times. Thank you for your support.

HMRC Additional Funding Code (3- & 4-year-olds - 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. 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 co operation. 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. Drop Off and Collection Can we kindly remind you that we open at 7.30 am and close at 6.00 pm and any parents who pick up after this time will be charged.

CONTACT US 0333 043 22 22

www.22streetlanenursery.co.uk info@22streetlanenursery.co.uk