Summer term Newsletter April 2021

Parents Evenings

We have had a couple of parents asking about how they can talk to their child’s keyworker in more detail regarding their child’s time at nursery and their progress and development. We understand that communication is difficult at the moment for the brief spell of time you spend at the door with staff. Please feel free to email or ring at any time if you wish to have a quick chat with your child’s keyworker.
We will be discussing how we can hold either virtual or telephone parents’ evenings after Easter in our Room Leader meeting next week. I hope you appreciate that trying to organise over 100 parents’ evenings is not an easy task to organise at the best of times, so is even harder at the moment.

The issue we have is that staff are already working extended hours in order to ensure that our bubbles do not have to mix and to allow us to be able to offer parents/carers the childcare you need. In order to offer parents evenings to all parents, even virtually or on the telephone, would require staff to work even longer hours than they already are doing as we are at full staff: child ratio in all rooms and other staff are unable to cover in the rooms to allow staff time out during the day to do these. This as well as the paperwork required for all children’s learning and development and the extra cleaning duties means that staff have a large amount of pressure on them at the moment. However, once we have worked out suitable arrangements, we will be in touch to explain how this will work to allow those parents who wish to speak to their child’s keyworker the opportunity to. Apologies if anyone has felt there has been a lack of communication on our part recently, I assure you we are trying our absolute best at the moment to prepare for heading into our busiest term of the year.

Free-Entitlement

www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

As most of you will be aware, we have a uniform for our Busy Bees children to support them with their journey to school readiness which consists of a polo t-shirt and jumper. We also have purple nursery gym bags available for every room for your child’s spare clothes. If you would like to order an item of our uniform, please speak to Sarah or Becky regarding when the next order will be going in. We have already given out letter’s back in March 2020 for those children who have moved up in April, but we have not received enough order forms back to order, as we can only purchase in large bulks. We are aware that a couple of you have and are waiting, so we will let you know when the order for uniform has been made. If you have misplaced the form, then please ask staff for another one or please email and we will send you the order form. We will be making an order for all our children moving upstairs for September.

Covid-19

Thankyou to all Parents/Carers who have been using the ‘Q-Bell’ system to drop off and collect your child. We will be continuing to use this system to ensure the safety of our children, families and staff until all restrictions have been lifted. Please make sure you are using the app at drop off and collection times to ensure its smooth operation and if anybody is unable to use it, please ask them to ring nursery to check the que. We are in the process of looking into how we can offer a parents evening at the start of the Summer term in a safe and socially distance manner, more information will follow at a later date.

Car Park

Could I please ask that all parents/carers are being kind and considerate when using the car park. The people who are living above the Greyhound next door have been in touch regarding several instances where they have not been treated very nicely whilst trying to park outside their home. Just to make you aware, although the car park is for our use during our hours of operation, the residents of the pub are allowed to park on the car park and could I please ask that if anyone is blocking you in that you approach this as positively as possible when asking them to move.

Could we also ask that parent avoid parking on the pavement on the right-hand side as you enter the car park. Due to the recent water problems and the ones before Christmas, the entrance way to the car park has started to dip and we are currently waiting for united utilities to look at fixing this for us. We just want to try and reduce the impact on this area at the moment.

Concept Photography

You will be happy to hear that Concept photography are coming in on Tuesday 20^th April to take photos of your child.

To ensure we follow the necessary measures following the current guidelines, we are hoping to do these outside (weather permitting) if this cannot be done it will be done in the building. Jacqueline the photographer will be waiting with full PPE to take your child’s photograph, also following social distance guidelines. If you DO NOT wish for your child’s photograph to be taken, please let Sarah or Becky know ASAP.

Appetite

We have decided to try a new organisation 2 days per week, which provides nutritious meals that cater to all allergens and intolerances in our nursery. These are expertly crafted by nutritionists and chefs, creating tasty nutritious meals which not only support children’s growth, but also encourage children to try new meals with exciting flavours to help develop their taste pallet. Please look at our nursery website where you will find our 3 week rolling menus for Spring & Summer.