22 Street Lane Nursery - February 2019 Newsletter

February Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome to our February Newsletter, and as always, greetings to our new families who have recently joined us. We have a busy month ahead planned for the children, recently kicking off with Chinese New Year celebrations followed by Valentine’s Day. Therefore expect lots of amazing activities that are also bound to leave the children full of wonder learning about another country’s culture and customs. We are also gearing up for making our submissions for awards this month which although won’t be presented until the end of the year are something we can be getting excited about right now! We are applying for a number of categories awarded by the prestigious NDNA, the NMT, Nursery World, and the National Nursery Recognition Awards – all very respected organisations in the childcare sector which will look fabulous next to our name. We would love to get your support with this and some of the awards require parent submissions (more information can be found in the newsletter), so if you and your child love 22 Street Lane Nursery and want to help get us some wins then please get involved!

February Newsletter

Country of the Month: CHINA

We will be taking a trip across the globe to Asia and celebrating China as February’s country of the month. We will be exploring Chinese cuisine using chopsticks and looking at traditional Chinese clothing. If any families have any resources that would support us such as photographs, clothing, maps etc., we would be most grateful to borrow them. Did you know? Ice cream originated in China. It was first invented in 2000 BC when the Chinese put together soft milk and rice in the snow.

Thank you to those who took the time to vote for January’s Employee of the Month. We have had lots of input and would like to thank the winners for their continued hard work and professionalism - we thank you for your vote! Staff News: Employee of the Month goes to…

Congratulations to this month’s winners:

Chloe Powell

Chris Milner

Grace Stainton-Roy

We really do value your opinion and need your continued help to recognise the amazing work that our staff undertake each day. If you would like to nominate a member of staff for Employee of the Month, please click on the link below and help pick next month’s winner: www.22streetlanenursery.co.uk/employee-of-the-month-vote/

NEWS February Newsletter Parent Mini First Aid Class Our first parent Mini First Aid class was a huge success and we hope that those of you attended found it beneficial or will do in the future as we never know what is around the corner. The two-hour first aid for babies and children class covers CPR, choking, bumps, burns, breaks, bleeding, febrile seizures and meningitis awareness, and grants everyone who attends them a generally greater peace of mind. Mini First Aid have partnered with the Meningitis Research Foundation to ensure that all who attend our classes receive the most up to date information on meningitis awareness. Mini First Aid have not only received awards for the quality of the classes but those who consistently attend Mini First Aid review it as a 5 star first aid class. If you would be interested in attending a course in the future, please email Alex alexandra@22streetlanenursery so we can look into holding additional courses in the future.

Chinese New Year Our Chinese New Year celebrations will kick off on Monday 4th February and we have lots of exciting activities in store! The children will have the opportunity to explore Chinese cuisine using chopsticks, dragon dancing, lantern making, and mark-marking Chinese symbols. This year we are celebrating the Year of the Pig so the children will be taking part in many pig-inspired activities! We would like to say a big thank-you to Adam Myers (Alex’s daddy from our Cygnets room) who will be bringing in different Chinese snacks from his restaurant, Mans Market in Leeds for the children to taste.

Winter Wonderland The children have had a wonderful time exploring Winter through many activities including ‘Winter small world’, igloos, ice play and winter crafts. We explored Arctic animals and their homes via the world map to see where they lived. We have explored the snow using shaving foam, paint and cotton wool but we are hoping to see the real thing so that we can make snowmen and snow angels in the garden! We transformed our role play areas into a ‘Frozen’ castle and Winter Wonderland which was very exciting.

NEWS February Newsletter Valentine’s Day We will be bringing some seasonal love and joy to 22 Street Lane and will be holding a Week of Love from 11th – 15th February. We will be discussing who we love and why, focusing on traditional love tales such as Cinderella, Princess and the Pea, and Beauty and the Beast. On the 14th February, the children can wear their red, pink, or heart- themed clothes to nursery, and our Head Chef Chris will be preparing a Valentine’s day lunch for them to enjoy.

We need your help! This year, 22 Street Lane will be entering several awards in recognition of our dedicated team, ethos, and environment. To support our applications, we are asking for parent testimonials to support why we think that are staff are a cut above the rest, including management, practitioners, and the kitchen staff.

If you would like to provide a written testimonial, please can you email this to Alex: alexandra@22streetlanenursery.co.uk - We are very thankful for your support!

STAFF NEWS

Leila Ewen Our warmest congratulations to Leila who supports our Chicklets at 22 Street Lane Nursery. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to juggle academic studies whilst caring for children full-time but Leila’s smashed her level 3 CACHE diploma and is now is a fully qualified childcare practitioner.

Holly Griffin Holly from the Swans room, has sailed through her level 3 CACHE diploma and so is now a fully-fledged practitioner. This means that she now fully qualified to apply her understanding of child learning and development at work, and all the fundamental aspects that comes with it like safeguarding, outdoor play, implementing foundation stage education, and child health and wellbeing.

It’s Awards Submission Time!

We’ll soon be entering our submissions for awards across a whole number of categories: Nursery of the Year, Best Independent Nursery, Nursery Food, Enabling Environments, and Working With Parents, just to name a few! These awards are distributed by some very reputable sources and over the coming months we will be working towards claiming some of these awards for the nursery, to recognise the great work our team do on a daily basis for the benefit of children, parents and the wider business.

‘Last year we received Ofsted’s ‘Outstanding’ status across all areas – a significant milestone and a huge achievement for everyone at 22 Street Lane. Our phenomenal staff deliver excellent practice day in, day out which has helped 22 Street Lane Nur sery become the fir st choice for many parents. I would like for the staff to be recognised for their continual effor ts and teamwork, and as such we have chosen 2019 to be the year of awards; we believe the timing couldn’t be better to put our selves forward for national recognition. ~ CAROLINE POLLARD, 22 STREET LANE NURSERY

We thought we’d give you a rundown of all the awards we’re applying for and who they are presented by for your reference, but also in case you would like to support us in our applications. We’ve provided links to all of the awarding bodies’ websites so you have access to the full descriptions of each award:

NMT Awards Individual Nursery, Nursery Indoor Learning Environment, Nursery Team, Nursery Business Development, Nursery Product/Innovation, Nursery Outdoor Learning Environment. http://nmt-magazine.co.uk/nursery-awards/

Nursery World Awards Nursery of the Year, Pre-School of the Year, Online and Social Media Award, Enabling Environments Award, Nursery Food Award, Working With Parents Award. https://www.nurseryworldawards.com/

National Nursery Recognition Awards Nursery of the Year – North, Best Independent Nursery, Best Staff, Best Indoor Learning Environment Best Outdoor Learning Environment, Nursery Food Recognition, Innovation Recognition, Best Website, Communication with Parents Recognition. https://www.nationalnurseryawards.co.uk/

NDNA Awards Nursery of the Year Award, Healthy Nursery of the Year Award. https://www.ndna.org.uk/NDNA/Events/Awards/NDNA_Awards.aspx

Support us with our Awards submissions Follow us on social media to keep up to date with our progress

February Newsletter

Chicklets This month many of the Chicklets children have found their feet and are beginning to take their first few steps independently! Although some of the children are not quite there yet, they are practicing hard using the walkers both indoors and outdoors. Alongside finding their feet, the children have also begun to experiment with moving their whole bodies to sounds they enjoy. We have seen some very impressive dance moves: from bouncing up and down, moving their arms up and down, and clapping their hands. With their interest in music and dancing growing, we have encouraged their interests by providing access to musical instruments and musical books. The Chicklets have become very involved in these activities and are starting to join in with a range of different songs such as ‘Wind The Bobbin Up’, 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It'. Additionally, to support this interest further we have taken a lot of the children along to participate in Tiny Dancers in the Ducklings room. The children seemed to have loved this and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of listening to the music, joining in with actions to different songs, popping bubbles, playing musical instruments, and exploring different materials. Please bring your child’s favourite book to nursery to help us plan!

CHICKLETS

February Newsletter

Ducklings The Ducklings have had a very busy month settling back into nursery after Christmas. The children have really enjoyed engaging in new activities this month, most notably we have introduced cookery classes to the children which they have really enjoyed. We loved making smoothies and discussing the healthy fruit we used. The children helped to chop bananas and put them in the blender, and then helped to pour the resulting mixture into cups and drank up their yummy, healthy smoothies! We also made some delicious protein oat balls which the children loved; we made our very own chef hats whilst we stirred the oats, honey and fruit! As always, the Ducklings are continuing to enjoy their story sessions from both old and new books, thank-you so much to all the parents who have brought in books from home for their children to share. We have had some lovely group story sessions and the children have enjoyed looking at them independently too. The Three Little Pigs have been a favourite and the children all enjoyed taking it in turns to use the stick puppets. We are going to extend this activity further by introducing sticks, straw and blocks for the children to build with. Despite the cold weather, we have wrapped up warm and enjoyed the outdoors playing on the bikes and practiced our balancing skills by balancing on beams!

DUCKLINGS

February Newsletter Goslings This month the Goslings have developed very particular interests which we have been

expanding on and accommodating by creating variations of activities. The Goslings have really taken a interest in counting and categorising, using various materials such as stones and many heuristic items. We then developed this interest further by creating large patterns using the wooden shape sorters - this sparked some of the children’s curiosity as they played with them as stepping stones to hop, jump and skip over (we can jump really well but we are still learning how to hop and skip!) We then created opportunities to practice our hopping, skipping and jumping with indoor and outdoor activities including setting up mini obstacle courses. It has been very cold but that's not stopped the Goslings from wanting to play out: the children have enjoyed exploring the frost, brushing it away, and creating marks using a variety of tools. When exploring our touch senses, the Goslings have been describing what they feel, expanding their descriptive vocabulary using words such as ‘very cold’, ‘freezing’ & ‘melting’. Lastly, the Goslings have shown a huge interest in transport, especially buses - one of our children came to nursery on the bus and was very pleased with his bus ticket. We supported his interest by bringing in bus and train tickets for our role-play area. We talked about the buses and trains, and sung ‘The Wheels on The Bus’, which the children joined in with rhymes and actions.

GOSLINGS

February Newsletter

Cygnets The Cygnets have had a very exciting month and have a shown a huge interest in dinosaurs. They have also enjoyed painting with dinosaurs using their footprints, and making their very own dinosaur fossils using salt dough. We have been on an adventure to the park, walking through the crispy, icy grass as we went on a bear hunt, collecting many sticks for the dinosaurs back at nursery. We have transformed our play area into a ‘Farm Shop’ and took the children to buy their own fruit and vegetables for their shop. We discussed the different colours of the fruits and vegetables, and where they grow - we learned that broccoli grows from the ground and apples grow from trees! We explored the fruits and vegetables by tasting, touching and smelling. Each child chose their own vegetable to take back to nursery for the farm shop. To extend our learning we will be growing our own fruits and vegetables in early March which will hopefully be ready to harvest in the late Summer!

CYGNETS

February Newsletter

Swans The Swans have been very busy throughout January and have enjoyed participating in various activities, linked to our themes of Winter and dinosaurs. We started the month by learning all about Iceland; the children enjoyed making some Northern Lights pictures after learning about how they occur and what exactly they look like. We used many different materials to create the right effect and the children couldn’t wait to take them home! We also enjoyed learning all about animals that live in Iceland among other cold climates: discussing what they are called, what they look like, and what they like to eat. The children looked at this further by exploring our Arctic Tuff Tray and looked at a selection of Winter stories, both fiction and non- fiction. The following week, we also made our very own volcanoes which the children really enjoyed! We learnt all about volcanoes, and even watched some videos of them erupting to help us understand what happens during an eruption and why. Baking has been another exciting part of the month for the Swans and we really liked making Icelandic bread for the children to take home, but also for all our parents to try (we hope you all enjoyed it!) The children to great interest in looking at the ingredients we needed to make the bread and measured everything independently using digital weighing scales.

Swans

February Newsletter

Recipe of the Month

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil • 1 white onion, chopped

• 1 large carrot, cut into 1cm pieces • 1 celery stick, cut into 1cm pieces • 2 garlic cloves, crushed • 500g lamb mince • 2 tablespoons tomato paste • 400g can chopped tomatoes • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce • 3/4 cup (185ml) lamb stock • 1 cup (120g) frozen peas • 4 large sweet potatoes • 1/2 cup (60g) grated cheddar

Shepard’s Pie with Sweet Potato topping

Method 1. Preheat oven to 220°C.

2. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrot and celery to pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 mins or until onion softens. Add garlic and cook for 30 secs or until fragrant. Add mince and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up any lumps, for 8 mins or until browned. Add tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce and stock, and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for 15 mins or until mixture thickens slightly. Stir in peas. Set aside for 15 mins to cool. 3. Meanwhile, peel and boil the sweet potatoes until soft and ready for mashing. 4. Spoon the lamb mixture into a bowl suitable for the oven. Top with sweet potato mash. Bake for 10- 15 mins or until golden. Serve with seasonal vegetables.

February 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 With the cold months ahead, 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.

February 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.

CONTACT: 03330 43 22 22 info@22str eetlanenur ser y.co.uk 22 Str eet Lane, Roundhay, Leeds, LS8 2ET

ONLINE: www.22str eetlanenur ser y.co.uk