22 Street Lane Nursery - May 2025 Newsletter

Nursery Newsletter May 2025 Play • Discovery • Growth

May Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers, As always, a very big welcome to all our new families who have joined us at 22 Street Lane. The children have had a very busy month as Spring is in the air, and we have been spending lots more time outdoors and beginning to enjoy the sunshine. We celebrated lots of special days this month, including Vaisakhi, Easter (with our annual Easter bonnet parade), St George’s Day and Passover. The children have lots to look forward to during May, such as Mental Health Awareness Week, our Grandparent’s Stay and Play event, World Bee Day and National Children’s Gardening Week towards the end of the month. We will also be having a special visit from the mobile farm where the animals will come and stay in the nursery garden for the day. To find out more, please read on...

May Newsletter STAFF NEWS

Goodbye, Lisa Sadly, we said goodbye to Lisa in April, as she has moved to another setting to continue her career in childcare. We wish Lisa the best of luck for the future!

Welcome Hannah! We would like to give a warm welcome to Hannah who has recently joined our Bank Staff team. Hannah has already started working closely with all of the children and is enjoying getting to know everyone. “I am really excited to be part of the team working in 22 Street Lane Nursery, I am enthusiastic about working with children, and watching their individual personalities flourish and develop. I’m looking to begin a career where I can channel my enthusiasm for child development, with my goal being to contribute meaningfully to their early years. In my spare time, I love spending time with friends and family and travelling to new destinations!”

New Buggy Park and Cycle Store As you may have noticed, the wall for our new buggy/cycle store has been completed recently, and we hope work will be complete over the next couple of weeks, once the roof has been fitted! We will provide any further updates on Tapestry, but we hope this helps many of our families who enjoy walking and cycling to the nursery!

May Newsletter

NEWS

Country of the Month, May 2025: Spain Throughout April, we learnt all about England, as we celebrated St George’s Day. The children learnt lots of facts about our country, created their own versions of the flag, made their own shields, and ate a variety of traditional British foods. Throughout May, we will be exploring Spain as our Country of the Month, as many of our families have enjoyed holidays in Spain recently. We will be creating our own interpretations of the Spanish flag, sampling some of the local cuisine and having a go at Flamenco dancing! We will also be learning how to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Spanish and our older children will be continuing their learning by practising counting up to 10. Did you know? The Spanish language is one of the most popular in the world and is spoken in many countries, such as Mexico and Argentina due to the early influence of the Spanish Empire. If any parents have any resources that support our Country of the Month, we would be most grateful.

Vaisakhi Festival Celebrations Vaisakhi is the Sikh New Year celebration. A joyous and vibrant event that also doubles as their Spring Harvest Festival. This is a time when Sikhs rejoice in the abundance of crops and pray for future good fortune! During these celebrations, the children got involved in lots of themed activities, including creating their own colourful Rangoli patterns, drawing their own interpretation of the Guru, learning some traditional Bhangra dancing, and exploring lots of themed tuff trays. The Swans children also enjoyed learning about the story of Vaisakhi and designed their own beautiful henna patterns.

May Newsletter NEWS

Upcoming Nursery Closure Dates We just wanted to remind parents that the Nursery will be closed on the following dates over the coming weeks: May Day Bank Holiday: Monday 5th May Spring Bank Holiday: Monday 26th May Staff Training Day: Wednesday 4th June We hope all our 22 Street Lane children enjoy their days off and we look forward to their return!

Passover Celebrations 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 (which is a type of unleavened bread/ cracker), gefiltefish 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.

May Newsletter NEWS

Earth Day Festivities! We supported Earth Day by learning all about the world and how we can protect it by looking after our environment. As the Nursery is also currently working towards a new accreditation to become an ‘Eco-School’, this was a momentous day for us, as we continued to incorporate sustainability into all the activities planned!

May Newsletter NEWS

Easter Bonnet Parade and Egg Hunt! On Thursday 17th April, everyone had so much fun at our annual Easter Bonnet Parade and Egg Hunt. The children brought in some wonderfully decorated bonnets and showcased them in the garden - everyone had lots of fun! Lots of Easter-themed activities also took place throughout the week including themed tuff trays and baking some delicious Easter treats.

May Newsletter

NEWS

Zoo Lab Visit Linked to Earth Day, the Cygnets and Swans enjoyed a special visit from Zoo Lab. The children participated in a workshop where they learnt all about conservation and how to protect endangered species, and were fascinated to meet and gently touch an African giant snail, a cockroach, a snake, and even a tarantula.

Mental Health Awareness Week: W/C Monday 12th May This year, the week takes place from 12 to 18 May 2025 and the theme is ‘community’. We want to use this Mental Health Awareness Week to celebrate the power and importance of community. Being part of a safe, positive community is vital for our mental health and well-being. To support Mental Health Awareness Week the children will be

participating in lots of themed activities, such as talking about how they feel, and what makes them happy, sad, angry and excited. The children will also be participating in yoga sessions, practising their breathing techniques, and exploring a range of books linked to feelings and emotions. If you have any resources linked to Mental Health and Wellbeing, please feel free to bring these in for your child to share…

Petting Farm Visit: Tuesday 13th May We are so excited for the petting farm to come and visit us. The animals will spend the day in the nursery garden, where the children will have the opportunity to go out and visit them. They’ll even be able to pet and feed them if they’re feeling brave!

May Newsletter NEWS

World Bee Day: Tuesday 20th May In support of ‘World Bee Day’ we be teaching the children the importance of Bees and other pollinators, and the importance they have to our food supply. We will also be beginning to send our new Home Learning Bag, called ‘Bertie Bee’s Busy Bag’ around all of the rooms for children to take home with them over the weekend.

National Children’s Gardening Week: W/C Monday 26th May National Children’s Gardening Week is an annual event dedicated to encouraging children to discover the wonders of gardening. During this week-long celebration, we will be providing the children with opportunities to grow plants, learn about ecosystems, and appreciate the beauty and importance of gardening. Some of the children will even be taking a trip to Oli’s allotment. If you have any pictures of your children gardening, we would love to see these on Tapestry!

The Big Green Egg Since the launch of our new summer menu, the Nursery has invested in a brand new barbecue - ‘The Big Green Egg’ - which you may have noticed as you enter the Nursery. The children have already enjoyed their first couple of BBQs served with a range of rice, salads and flatbreads. These have been a huge success, and Oli will be continuing to serve lots of lovely BBQs over the next few months. We can’t wait to try all the new recipes!

May Newsletter Grandparent’s Stay and Play: Monday 19th - Friday 23rd May We would like to invite someone special to attend our Grandparent’s Stay and Play which will be held on the following days for each room:

Monday 19th May Tuesday 20th May Wednesday 21st May Thursday 22nd May

Cygnets Goslings

3-4pm 3-4pm 3-4pm 3-4pm 3-4pm

Swans

Chicklets Ducklings

Friday 23th May

Spaces will be offered on a first come, first served basis. If you would like to attend please leave a comment on the Tapestry post for this event with your child’s name, the attendee’s name/s and the date of the Stay and Play session you would like to attend. Please note that we can only permit two grandparents per child.

May Newsletter

Swans Graduation Ceremony: Thursday 10th July

We’ve already started planning for this big day as it’s always such an exciting day in our annual calendar. So make sure to pop this very important date in your diary, as it’s not one to miss. Our Swans Graduation is always a special event, and we hope to make this year’s ceremony bigger and better than ever before, with tons of fun activities, big performances and yummy food. We’ll be looking back at the time our Swans spent at 22 Street Lane and wishing them lots of luck in Big School!

May Newsletter

Dish of the Month

See our past selections on: 22streetlanenursery.co.uk/dish-of-the-month/ Chargrilled Beef Koftas with a Mini Greek Salad

Ingredients

Kofta Mix: • 500g lean steak mince • 1 garlic clove, finely diced • 1 piece of fresh ginger, grated • 1 bunch of coriander, finely diced • 1 red onion, very finely diced • 10g of salt and pepper • 1 teaspoon of turmeric • 1 teaspoon of cumin • 1 chilli deseeded and finely diced

Salad Mix: • 1 handful of jumbo couscous • 1 pack of vegan or regular feta • 1 pack of salad leaves of your choice • Half a cucumber, roughly sliced • 2/3 good quality tomatoes, cut into wedges • Any salad of your choice • The zest and juice of 2 lemons • 8-10 fresh mint leaves • 20ml malt vinegar • Half of a pomegranate • Handful of flat-leaf parsley • 1 tbsp coconut oil, melted if solid

Method 1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the kofta mix ingredients together making sure that all of the spices and herbs are well mixed. Form them into balls. 2. Start by bringing a pan of water to the boil with a little salt for the jumbo couscous. Cook it for around 8-12 minutes following packaging guidelines and then drain, leaving it to cool. 3. Make sure all of the salad ingredients are washed. Then mix the cucumber, salad leaves and tomatoes together with the cooled cooked couscous. Add the lemon juice, feta, mint and any remaining ingredients. 4. Cook the beef koftas on a BBQ or in an oven to over 75C degrees. We choose to serve ours with a homemade vegan tzatziki.

May Newsletter

Chicklets Room News

The Chicklets have had a brilliant April! We started the month off by taking a lovely trip to Roundhay Park. We enjoyed noticing lots of details in our environment, such as flowers, cars, dogs, and birds. The Chicklets enjoyed picking different natural objects from our walk and taking them back to the nursery to enhance our set-ups. As always, the Chicklets have been doing lots of baking. This time round we baked Lavender Vegan Shortbread biscuits. We ventured into Oli’s allotment and picked some homegrown lavender to mix with our ingredients to make shortbread and we were very good at picking the lavender leaves ready to bake. All the Chicklets enjoyed using their fine motor skills to mix all the ingredients together, ‘mix, mix, mix!’ They took turns to add the ingredients and mix them all together. The Chicklets then did an amazing job at rolling out the mixture one by one and then cutting it into star shapes. They were so yummy. The Chicklets also enjoyed celebrating Easter throughout April, and we enjoyed exploring tuff trays filled with mud inside using our fingers to search for the Easter Bunny picking up carrots along the way! We also enjoyed exploring a chick sensory tray where we had to find all the little chicks hiding in the messy play and we enjoyed reading ‘peekaboo chick and fluffy chick’ once we had explored the trays.

CHICKLETS ROOM

May Newsletter

Ducklings Room News

April has been an amazing month in our Ducklings Room! We celebrated the start of spring by exploring our colourful messy tray with feathers, paint and flowers which the Ducklings loved to explore by feeling the different textures and learning about the season. We went on lots of exciting walks with the weather being lovely. We visited Roundhay Park to feed the ducks and swans and we looked at the flowers in the flower garden while enjoying a long walk around in the sun. The Ducklings also had a walk up to the charity shops on Street Lane where they chose a few books of interest. They did so well at paying the shopkeepers and saying, ‘thank you’ and ‘bye, bye!’ and then we went back to the nursery and had a lovely time reading the books. We have also been doing lots of Sustainability Play in our room. The Ducklings loved getting messy in our arctic ice tray which we filled with different coloured ice cubes. The Ducklings had so much fun saving the animals and creating their own marks when the ice melted. We then had an ocean tray where we read all about the ocean animals and pretended we were at the beach. The Ducklings practised their fine motor skills by litter picking using the mini pliers and tissue paper as ‘rubbish’ which was such a great way to make the children more aware of their environment in a fun way. We finished the month off by celebrating St George’s Day where we created our own England flag out of red and white pasta. The Ducklings spent some time transferring the rice around the tray with the scoopers as we spoke about where we live in England, as it is also our Country of the Month.

DUCKLINGS ROOM

May Newsletter

Goslings Room News

It has been a blissful start to the spring season over in the Goslings Room! This month we have been super busy celebrating many traditional holidays and working together to protect our world and environment. To celebrate Vaisakhi the children enjoyed used chop sticks and other mark making materials to create their own traditional rangoli patterns which we displayed in our room for the parents to see. We have also enjoyed celebrating St. George’s Day recently too. We read a story about the knights and then the children enjoyed using plain dot sticks to decorate their own knight shields as a group and we also created our own England flags which we enjoyed waving on the balcony to show everyone out in the big garden. We celebrated Easter at the nursery too, the children enjoyed decorating their Easter Bonnets and then showcasing them all around the room and in the garden. We did a huge Easter Egg Hunt in the garden and also in our local park and the children all worked together as a team to collect the eggs and put them into the basket so we could count them after. Next month we will be focusing on mindfulness and looking at different ways in which we can promote this for the children both at home and nursery, we will be participating in yoga sessions and will be joining in with activities that support us in identifying different emotions.

GOSLINGS ROOM

May Newsletter

Cygnets Room News

The Cygnets had a wonderful time celebrating Easter with lots of themed activities. The children got creative making Easter Egg bunting, chick collages, and bunny crafts using recycled materials. They practised their fine motor skills by cutting patterned eggs, threading wool, and forming playdough carrots. We explored positional language during our Easter Egg Hunt tuff tray, created little nests with shredded paper and chicks, and made sweet bunny cards using potato prints. We also celebrated Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year, by exploring symmetrical painting through Rangoli pattern art and using a tuff tray filled with colourful shapes. The children also made lion collages, learning about the meaning of the surname Singh, which means ‘lion’. For Jewish Passover, the children created their own ‘apple biscuits’ using playdough, carefully rolling and decorating them. This month, roleplay has been a big hit. The Cygnets have loved playing in our dentist surgery setup, taking turns and learning about caring for our teeth. They’ve also enjoyed imaginative play in our pretend café and train station, serving food and travelling to exciting destinations. We’ve also had some very exciting visitors! Zoo Lab came to see us, and the children had the chance to meet and gently touch animals including a giant snail, cockroach, snake, and even a tarantula. We’ve also continued to enjoy our fantastic sessions with Debutots, DanceLab, Rugbytots, and Noodle the Poodle.

CYGNETS ROOM

May Newsletter

Swans Room News

In March all the children were filled with excitement, as we welcomed some very special visitors - chick eggs! The children were captivated as they watched the eggs crack and heard the first little peeps as the chicks began to hatch. This experience has provided us with a fantastic opportunity to explore a variety of activities and create an array of chick-themed crafts. From painting chicks to making textured egg pictures, as well as discussing the different stages of the chick life cycle. The children have been learning about how chicks grow, what they need to survive, and how to care for them. The children have been very mindful of handling the chicks gently and with care as well as creating a calm and safe environment for them to thrive. The children were very excited to invite their mummies into the Swans Room for a stay and play. The children loved getting involved in a variety of different activities such as mummy and me jigsaws, flower planting and making potions. As we prepare for Spring the children have been helping Oli with some planting in the garden. The children have been caring so well for these and getting excited to watch the plants progress each week!

SWANS ROOM

May Newsletter

2025 Events Calendar *Dates subject to change - Please check the website for the latest calendar

Early May Bank Holiday, Nursery Closed

Monday 5th

W/C Monday 12th

Mental Health Awareness Week

May

Tuesday 20th

World Bee Day

Spring Bank Holiday, Nursery Closed

Monday 26th

W/C Monday 26th

National Childrens’ Gardening Week

Tuesday 3rd

Bicycle Day - Bring your bike to Nursery day!

Wednesday 4th

Team Training Day, Nursery Closed

W/C Monday 9th

Father’s Day Stay & Play

Healthy Eating Week & Great Big Green Week

W/C Monday 9th

Friday 6th

Eid Al Adha

June

Monday 16th

Chicklets, Goslings, Swans Parents Evening

Wednesday 18th National Picnic Week W/C Monday 30th - TBC Beach Party Week Wednesday 25th

Ducklings & Cygnets Parents Evening

Thursday 28th

Thanksgiving

July

Thursday 10th

Swans Graduation Ceremony

Friday 1st

Yorkshire Day

August

Summer Bank Holiday, Nursery Closed

Monday 25th

W/C Monday 25th

Carnival Week

TBC

Macmillan Bake sale

September

W/C Monday 22nd

Rosh Hashanah

May Newsletter

2025 Events Calendar *Dates subject to change - Please check the website for the latest calendar

Wednesday 1st

Black History Month

W/C Monday 20th

Diwali

W/C Monday 20th & W/C Monday 27th

October

Halloween Stay & Play

Team Training Day, Nursery Closed

Thursday 30th

Friday 31st

Halloween Fancy Dress Day

Wednesday 5th

Bonfire Celebrations

Monday 10th

Chicklets, Goslings, Swans Parents Evening

Tuesday 11th

Remembrance Sunday

Thursday 13th

World Kindness Day

November

TBC

World Nursery Rhymes Week

Friday 21st

Children in Need

Wednesday 19th

Cygnets and Ducklings Parents Evening

Thursday 27th

Thanksgiving

TBC

Christmas Jumper Day

TBC

Swans Christmas Nativity

W/C Monday 15th

Chanukah Celebrations

December

W/C Monday 15th

Christmas Party Week

Wednesday 17th

22SLN Christmas Dinner Day

Christmas Eve, Nursery Closes at 12pm

Wednesday 24th

May Newsletter

*ATTENTION* Important Information - Please Read Rubbish Disposal in the Car Park Recently, there have been several occasions where rubbish, plastic bags and dog faeces have been found on the grass, or on the ground in the car park. Please can we therefore politely remind all parents to dispose of any rubbish in the bins inside the Nursery, and not allow any pets to go on the grassy areas, as this is not permitted. Birthdays Unfortunately, we do not allow parents to bring in birthday cakes treats to celebrate birthdays. If you would like to bring something in, we can suggest stickers, bubbles and other party bag fillers. If it is your child’s birthday, please tell us so that we can celebrate with a class disco! 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.

May Newsletter

*ATTENTION* Important Information - Please Read Drop Off and Collection Please remember that we open at 7.30am and close at 6.00pm, and anyone who picks up after this will be charged a late fee. 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. 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. Sun Cream and Sunhats With the warmer months upon us, please can you ensure that your child has appropriate clothing for warm weather including sun cream and a sun hat. We would recommend that you provide sun cream which is factor 50 and at least a 4-star UVA rating. If you could please label your child’s sun cream and hat with their name, it would be helpful.

CONTACT US 0333 043 22 22

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