22 Street Lane Nursery - September 2021 Newsletter

Newsletter September

Play • Discovery • Growth

September Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome to our September newsletter, and as always, a very warm welcome to all the new families who have joined us recently. Each month, we send a Newsletter to all our families to share news and events that have taken place or will take place throughout the nursery. We hope that you will find our Newsletter useful and informative. August has been a very busy month for everyone at 22 Street Lane, with so many settles taking place to prepare the children for the move to their new rooms. The children are all ready for their transitions and we hope they all settle quickly and easily into their new environments. During August, we celebrated the Olympics and the children took part in some games of their own. They have also been exploring the wonders of Italy with our Country of the Month celebrations, learning about the colours of the flag, looking at the exciting monuments and also learned to count in Italian too. Chris prepared a lovely Italian meal for the children and they were able to enjoy some vanilla gelato kindly supplied by one of our families. We are looking forward to a busy September as we welcome lots of new little Chicklets, Ducklings and Goslings joining the nursery. To find out more, please read on...

September Newsletter

NEWS

Items and Toys from Home

Please could we remind parents to make sure that your children do not bring any toys in from home, other than dummies or comforters (which will be used at sleep times and then put straight back in the child’s bag). Please could we also ask that comforters be washed regularly. We cannot take responsibility for any toys that are lost or damaged.

Nursery Uniform Reminder:

We would just like to remind parents that all children in the Cygnets and Swans Rooms are required to wear a nursery uniform from September. This is compulsory for all children who attend these rooms. You are able to purchase a new uniform from Rawcliffes Uniform Shop: https://www.rawcliffesleeds.co.uk/search-by-schools/22-street- lane-nursery.html

Alternatively, your child can wear navy joggers/leggings with a navy/white polo shirt.

Employee Recognition Award, August 2021

Thank you to all the parents who took the time to vote for the staff member they feel deserves the ‘Employee Recognition Award’. We believe our staff should be recognised for delivering outstanding care and education each and their continued hard work.

We are delighted to announce that August’s award goes to…

Paul Moyo, Swans Room

Please visit our website to place for vote for next month: https://www.22streetlanenursery.co.uk/employee-recognition-award-vote/

September Newsletter

NEWS

Room Transitions and Settle Sessions

As all our little Ducklings and Goslings will be moving downstairs to the Cygnets Room, please could we ask you to bring in a water bottle for your child which will be kept at nursery. The entrance to the Cygnet Room is around the back of the building at the moment, with the entrance through the gate in the front. Please note that this gate will be locked from 9:00am until 4:00pm. Should you require access between these times, you will need to come in through the reception and your child will be collected by a member of staff from the reception area. Just a gentle reminder that your little one will now have to wear a nursery uniform too.

Yorkshire Day Festivities

We started September by celebrating Yorkshire, and what better way to do it than with a cup of Yorkshire tea! Our younger children enjoyed making tea with their friends using real teabags and were very interested to see the water change colour. All the children enjoyed using the authentic tea sets and cups and saucers too so that they could have a tea party with their friends. The children also enjoyed experimenting with messy play using the colours of the Yorkshire flag and the white rose. The older children created some beautiful Yorkshire flags with paint and were able to show-off their well-developed fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination.

September Newsletter

NEWS

Celebrating the end of the Olympics

The children had so much talking about the Olympics last month, as many had been watching the games on TV and knew all about the different events. The children took part in many activities celebrating all aspects of the Olympic Games, such as creating their own Olympic flames with brightly coloured pens and paint, as well as creating flames using different coloured tissue paper squares. Some children printed out their own Olympic rings using the different coloured paint. Some of the younger children enjoyed making their own medals using paint or play dough. Everyone wanted a medal! There was a lot of conversation around the different events and the children enjoyed playing with the dressage area, with some even having a go at weight lifting.

Carnival Week has been very exciting and full of lovely, colourful activities and music. Last month the children had lots of fun celebrating Carnival Week, where they all had the chance to design their own carnival hats using different paints and feathers, which they then wore during their singing and dancing sessions. Some of the children even had their own carnival parade wearing the lovely hats they created and used all their instruments to join in with the carnival music. The children also cut up their own colourful summer fruit to make their own fruit kebabs. This activity really challenged their co- ordination to cut fruit pieces and ‘thread’ them on to the sticks, which they all managed beautifully!

September Newsletter

NEWS

Celebrating Italy throughout August!

This was a very busy week with the children experimenting with the colours of the Italian flag through their messy play and art and craft activities. How could we get through a week without making our own pizzas for tea? All the children had a go at making their own pizzas or calzone and enjoyed the challenge of rolling the dough and then choosing their own toppings. Some children designed their own play dough pizzas too. The children even had a go at being artists and painting beautiful pictures of Venice, as well as recreating some famous landmarks too, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum. Chris made sure he took part too and provided a wonderful Italian lunch for the children with a very special treat of vanilla gelato for dessert.

Around the World in 30 Days

As a nursery, we have decided that instead of exploring a 'Country of the Month' each month, we will instead visit lots of countries throughout the month while exploring a different theme; this will be called 'Around the World in 30 Days'. The focus for each month will be different, and the aim is to explore a topic relating to different cultures around the world with an emphasis on the many different nationalities we have within our 22 Street Lane Family. For September, our focus will be on nature and the children will learn all about the natural world. This will include mountain areas, lakes, rivers and many other natural beauties! Our next 12 months will be on:

September: Nature October: Seasons November: Homes

March: Animals April: Transport May: Languages June: Landmarks July: Famous People August: Careers & Aspirations

around the world December: Food January: Song & Dance February: Clothing

September Newsletter

The Curiosity Approach at 22 Street Lane In this technological age, our society contains a multitude of distractions: iPads, computers, television and electronic toys. Together these can create an overabundance of sensory stimulation and a busy, hectic life that fills a child’s brain, overstimulated with that constant noise and endless activity. Do you wonder what the future of our littlest people looks like? We need to enhance their communication and literacy skills and develop their imagination in play through creating an environment of awe and wonder. The Curiosity Approach values time and space, and looks to empower children. Helping them to become the thinkers and doers of the future. Through uncluttered and beautiful environments, it is our aim to create a calm and tranquil environment in which children can be curious to investigate, discover and learn. To allow children time and space to tinker, explore and work at their own pace. Through a child-centred approach, we encourage the power of concentration in young children. We are passionate educators who are looking to empower our children for a successful and happy future through play, exploration and discovery. Setting them up with the skills for life!

Teaching our children through heart and soul is what we must aspire to do. Look closely at their faces, how incredible to witness such pure joy. There’s truly no better reward!

“If you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion.” ~ Mia Hamm

Continuing our sharing of the A-Z of the Curiosity Approach, we are showcasing M & N this month:

Mindfulness - “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle. We need to create a mindful oven of loveliness that needs thoughtful practitioners and professionals to be mentally present, thankful and forever curious about their career with little children.

Natural Materials - It is vital that practitioners provide natural materials as part of their core offer. They offer so many more opportunities for creativity, imagination and joyfulness in their play. Natural resources provide a range of textures and possibilities for children to explore closely using all of their senses. They are flexible, open ended, aesthetic and unique.

September Newsletter

Rosh Hashanah: Tuesday 7 th September

Rosh Hashanah is the 'Jewish New Year' and the celebration of Creation. It begins on the evening on Monday 6th September and ends on the 8th of September. To celebrate, the children will be able to make lots of dishes containing honey, as it's a custom to make sweet treats to represent a sweet new year ahead. Rooms may also make 'Shana Tova' cards (happy new year cards), design their own honey pots, enjoy apple slices dipped in honey and learn the song "dip the apples in the honey" too!

September Newsletter

Macmillan Bake Sale: Tuesday 28 th September

To support the Macmillan Coffee Morning, we will be holding our bake sale on Tuesday 28th September from 4pm-6pm. Children are invited to bake your own tasty treats at home with your parents and bring some in to sell at the bake sale. We'll also be baking some extra treats with the children in each of the rooms at the Nursery to contribute as well! The bake sale will take place in the nursery car park, near the Goslings gate. All donations are welcome, with all money received going to Cancer Research.

September Newsletter

Dish of the Month

Chickpea Tagine Soup

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

Ingredients

• 2 red peppers • 1 tbsp rapeseed oil • 1 red onion, thinly sliced • 2 large garlic cloves, crushed • 2 tsp ground coriander • 1 tsp ground cumin • 2 tbsp rose harissa paste • 2 x 400g cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed • 1 ½ low-salt veg stock • 150g kale, chopped • 1 lemon, zested and juiced • 50g dried apricots, finely chopped • ½ small bunch parsley, finely chopped • Fat-free natural yogurt, to serve

Method

1. Heat the grill to its highest setting. Halve and de-seed the peppers, then lay cut-side down on a baking paper lined with foil. 2. Grill for 10-15 minutes, or until blistered and softened. Leave until cool enough to handle, then remove and discard the skins. Slice the roasted peppers into thin strips. 3. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a low heat. Fry the onion for 8-10 minutes until softened. Stir through the garlic, coriander, cumin and harissa paste and cook for 1 minute more. Add the chickpeas and stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes, covered. 4. Stir the peppers through the soup with the kale, lemon zest juice and apricots, then cook while covered for another 5 minutes. 5. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve with the chopped parsley sprinkled over and a touch of yogurt, if you like.

September Newsletter

Chicklets Room News The children have all spent this month settling into their new rooms and meeting their new key workers. All the children have done really well on the settles and we know they are all going to love their new rooms. We have been celebrating Italy as our 'Country of the Month'. The children have enjoyed making marks in the shaving foam with the Italian flag colours. They have also enjoyed exploring the large spaghetti sensory tray, a lot of the children enjoyed eating this too. We have also been making our own pizzas with playdough and adding different heuristic objects as the toppings. The Chicklets also enjoyed celebrating Carnival Day this month, where they got to dance to carnival music and wave different sensory materials around. They have also enjoyed exploring the large scale colourful carnival tuff tray, where they enjoyed feeling the textures of the feathers and throwing the tissue paper up in the air. We have been exploring the new outdoor area in the baby garden and the children have loved playing with the new resources we have added. The children especially like the new busy board, where they have the chance to use the different mechanisms, such as using the door handles and zipping the zip up and down. The children have also enjoyed splashing in the large water tray and have been filling the pots and pans up with water. We have really enjoyed looking after all the Chicklets for the past year and watching them all develop and flourish. We are going to deeply miss our tiny people but we know they are going to love their new room.

CHICKLETS ROOM

September Newsletter

Ducklings Room News

The Ducklings started the month off with celebrations of Yorkshire Day, engaging in imaginative play, as they used their mathematical skills of pouring and emptying to serve their friends a cup of tea. We also enjoyed celebrating our 'Country of the Month', Italy. The children had fun serving and exploring different shapes of pasta in our role-play kitchen, painting over shapes using the colours of the Italian flag and developing their culinary skills in the kitchen by making their very own dough and topping their pizza’s with their favourite toppings. The Ducklings have had great fun exploring all the new resources in the garden, especially the water tray with the sea creatures and the busy board, which supports their fine motor skills development. They’ve also loved exploring our new musical instruments in the Teepee, as well as hearing what sounds they could make with the pots and pans on the soundboard. The Ducklings have all enjoyed their transitional visits to the Cygnet Room and have been really interested in playing in the big garden, developing their gross motor movements, jumping from small heights, playing superheroes, counting out scoops of sand into buckets in the sandpit, running up and down the hill and scrambling up the bark stairs to take turns at the top, to go down the slide. Our little people have enjoyed many opportunities to explore lots of creative and messy play, such as painting, making dinosaurs footprints, mixing ingredients to pretend to make favourite foods. There have been strong interests in imaginary play this month, using loose parts as food in the kitchen area and at the Teddy Bear's Picnic. They have also explored different leaves outside and learnt about where they come from.

DUCKLINGS ROOM

September Newsletter

Goslings Room News

The Goslings have made the most of getting outdoors this month, especially after the baby garden has had an amazing revamp. We have really enjoyed all the new equipment to explore and especially the busy board, which seems to have been a hit with the children. It gives them the opportunity to challenge themselves and work out how things work through real-life experiences. We have also loved venturing to the big garden where we have spent lots of time in the sandpit, pretending we were at the beach building sandcastles and burying "hidden treasure". A keen interest from the Goslings this month has been cleaning. This started with the sponges and water in the garden as the children were looking at what they could wash. Following on from this interest we decided it would be good fun for the children to do a real-life car wash. Madina kindly brought her car into the car park, provided large sponges and soapy water and then the children were ready for their challenge. They did a fantastic job at making the car look all shiny and new. This month we have focussed on preparing the Goslings for their transition to Cygnets as we want to ensure every transition goes as smoothly as possible. We have been talking with the children and explaining what happens in the Cygnets Room. We have been emphasising how much they are going to enjoy their new room. We know they are going to love it and are so ready for the next step in their learning journeys.

GOSLINGS ROOM

September Newsletter

Cygnets Room News

The Cygnets have been very busy this month and have loved learning about lots of exciting things. A big interest in the Cygnets Room at the moment is dinosaurs, so we have been doing lots of activities around this. We enjoyed making fossils out of clay, making dinosaur footprints with paint and reading lots of stories telling us all about dinosaurs. The Cygnets even made and explored our own volcano that we made in our dinosaur world outside. We talked about where we might find a volcano and what they are. The Cygnets also went on a trip to Tropical World, where we saw lots of fish, spiders, meerkats and even a crocodile. The Cygnets loved spotting all the different creatures and counted the fish as they swam past. The 'Country of the Month' for August has been Italy. The children got creative by making their own Italian flag from red, white and green tissue paper, crayons and paint. The Cygnets also enjoyed using different resources to make pizza. Some of the Cygnets enjoyed making pizza out of playdough then adding loose parts as the toppings, while others used paper plates and added paint and tissue paper to design their own. The children enjoyed this so much that we went on to create our own Italian restaurant. The Cygnets loved taking it in turns to be the chef by making pizza in the pizza oven we made from a cardboard box and then serving it to their friends that were sat waiting at the table. Finally, the Cygnets children have been getting ready to move to the Swans Room. They have been going on short visits to the room where they have had the chance to meet the practitioners and get used to the room. The Cygnets have loved exploring the room and enjoyed playing with the new and exciting toys.

CYGNETS ROOM

September Newsletter

Swans Room News

The Swans have been very busy throughout August, beginning by exploring Italy, which has been our 'Country of the Month'. The children enjoyed making lots of traditional Italian dishes such as pizzas and spaghetti, the children created their very own Italian flags by using paints, tissue paper and other creative materials as well as using watercolours to create a beautiful picture of Venice. The Swans had lots of fun taking part in the 'The Swans Olympics!' The children have really enjoyed getting involved in lots of fun activities related to the Olympics, participating in lots of races, completing obstacle courses, creating their very own Olympic torch and watching a few of the events on our Interactive screen. This month the Swans went on a very exciting trip to see the dinosaurs located all around the city centre of Leeds. We began our trip by getting on the bus, and the children were all so excited. We sang ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ and pointed out lots of well-known places and landmarks along the way, such as Roundhay Park. When we arrived in Leeds, we split up into smaller groups and began our adventure to find all of the dinosaurs along the Jurassic Trail. All of the children showed fantastic listening skills throughout the trip and remembered how important it was to hold hands and stay with their group and their adult to stay safe. As always, the children have also continued taking part in lots of other fun and exciting activities, with a particular emphasis this month on phonics (in particular rhyme) and maths, as the Swans have been showing lots of interest in these areas. The children have been practising writing CVC words, beginning to blend simple words when reading books and starting to add and subtract using a variety natural resources.

SWANS ROOM

September 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 when parking on Park Lane that you do not park over the driveways of the residents there. Many of them are Key Workers who need immediate access from their homes when called out. There have been a few vehicles obstructing their driveways recently. 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. We would just like to also remind you that the side gate to the Goslings, Cygnets and Swans areas will be locked between 9.00 am and 4.00 pm and should you drop off or collect outside of these times, it will be necessary to contact reception to arrange for someone to unlock the gate. High Temperatures and Fevers Please can we kindly remind parents that children cannot attend nursery if they have a high temperature (37.6 ° C). If a child develops a temperature whilst at nursery, parents will be called to collect them, as supported by our policies and procedures. Due to the guidance from National Health England, children who have a high temperature or a cough will be asked to have a Covid-19 test with a negative result required before returning to the setting. 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.

September Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Tuesday 7 th September Rosh Hashanah Celebrations

Tuesday 28 th September Macmillan Bake Sale

W/C Monday 4 th October Grandparent’s Tea Party Week (Weather Permitting - this event will be held outside to make as safe as possible - more details to follow)

Thursday 28 th October Halloween Fancy Dress Day

Tuesday 2 nd November Team Training Day, Nursery CLOSED

CONTACT US 0333 043 22 22

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