Calendar Dates
- There are no events for the next 10 weeks.
Nursery
Welcome to the last half of the year.
Last half term the nursery started to look at Health and Sport as the children were inspired by the Aston Villa football coach. This theme will continue with the continuing support of a coach, the kitchen garden and the Banardo's Toddle at the end.
We will also be looking at Transition to assist the children with their move to various reception classes in September. To support this we are creating reception role plays and arranging small group visits to Anglesey Reception and St Francis School.
Sound Bounce will also be returning to us for five music sessions and some more children will be visiting The Symphony Hall
We have been home visiting all the new children for September and have really enjoyed meeting with familiar and new families. We will be writing to you again at the beginning of July to ask you to join us for a Stay and play session where you will be able to meet the staff, fill in all the paper work and the children will have the chance to play with the other children in their key group.
Classes continue as usual in the Community Room and you can find an overview of the nursery curriculum in " About Us". If you wish for any further information please call direct on 0121 464 4385 or come in and see us.
The nursery visited the fire station last week and had a great time dressing up as firefighters, seeing the engine and police bikes and watching a firefighter slide down the pole. Fortunately there were no real call outs this time.
Welcome back to the summer term.
We hope you all enjoyed the break.
As you can see we had an exciting half term with the Living eggs hatching on day twenty one and growing into really rather large chickens. Nine out of the ten eggs hatched and when they were old enough they went to a new home on a farm. It was great watching them hatch and grow almost over night. We have placed a time lapsed video on the website so you can see for yourselves.
We finished the term with an Easter egg hunt on the last day where the children had to search out treats left by someone with suspiciously big feet.
Room one morning children had the opportunity to visit The Symphony Hall as the conclusion to the Sound Bounce work shops. They went on the stage, conducted the organ and had a musical picnic. It was a wonderful visit and other classes will have the same opportunity later in the summer term.
The afternoon children will have the opportunity to visit Handsworth Fire Station, watch this space for pictures.
We will be having a focus on Health and Sport this half term and we have been lucky enough to receive support with P.E. skills from the Premier League Stars event. We have a coach from Aston Villa coming to support both staff and children for the next ten weeks.
We will also be growing and tasting our own vegetables, keeping our bodies fit, including out teeth, making healthy choices and completing a fun run for Barnado's at the end of the term.
We know you grow vegetables at home so please share with us your ideas and successes.
Offers of nursery places have gone out in the holidays. Shortly we will be contacting families to arrange home visits to support with your induction process into nursery.
If you still wish to apply for a place or have not received a letter please call or drop into the nursery as soon as possible.
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We have had the Living Eggs package in the nursery this week. The children have been able to see the eggs hatch and then watch them develop. Next week when the chicks are a bit stronger the children will be able to hold the chicks and learn to care for them.
Welcome back to the second half of the spring term. We hope you all had a great break.
Last half term the nursery participated in a collaboration with The Symphony Hall and The Town Hall (TSTH) called Soundbounce. We had two professional musicians called Sara and Natalie who worked with the children on a project about a penguin called Parinda. Parinda traveled via different means to hot, cold and imaginary countries improvising with songs and instruments as she went. The children got really involved and explored new instruments such as the viola, the piano, the squeeze box, the xylophone and organ pipes.
The children's imagination was really stimulated and all of the activities were linked to early phonics skills to support the children's learning.We are hoping to arrange trips for the children who participated in this to travel to The Symphony Hall to see the real organ. We will keep you posted.
This half term we will be using the topic of "Dinosaurs and Animals" as the children are demonstrating a real enthusiasm for this subject in their play. We are consequently changing the role play areas to a vets and a dinosaur cave to support the play and the associated learning.
We are also planning some activities around World Book Day and Red Nose Day. Information about this will be sent to you shortly
We hope to begin indoor planting and some work again on our own kitchen garden soon, weather permitting, though cooking and tasting has gone on with our winter vegetables. As always please do let us know if you would like to join in.
Thank you to all the families that joined in the Talking Tips sessions and parent workshops. We have had some really good feed back from you. This half term we will be inviting a group of families to share in an early phonics project both at home and at school.
As always you will find an over view of the curriculum in " About Us" and you can come in to see us or call directly on 0121 464 4385 if you have any questions.
Community room regular activities include:
Stay and Play - Tuesday Morning -9.00 - 10.30am
Volunteer Training - Wednesday Morning - 9.00 - 10.00am
ESOL - Wednesday afternoon 1.00 - 3.00pm
Early Support Drop In - Thursday -9.00 - 10.30am
These sessions all take place in the Community room which is accessed to the left of the ramp by the main entrance to reception and Key Stage One.
Happy New Year and welcome to the first term of 2017.
We hope you all had a great holiday.
The nursery celebrated Christmas at the end of last term with lots of Christmas activities such as the making, writing and sharing of cards and also the big end of term party with Santa himself.
The children really enjoyed the games, dancing, dressing up, meeting Father Christmas and of course the gifts he brought with him.
We would like to thank all of you for your kind gifts and presents.
Also we would like to thank you for helping to raise over £800 with the rest of the school by supporting our Children in Need Super Hero day.
Following on from last half term's topic of Super Heroes we have decided to look at the topic of "Our Community" this term as this covers many of the areas the children are currently showing an interest in, for example, transport, people working in the community, our continuing gardening project, building projects, local visits, family and celebrations.
As in previous years we will be working again with Sound Bounce. These are two professional musicians funded by a partnership with The Town Hall and The Symphony Hall (THASH) to run a series of workshops with young children. The project is about a bird who uses various forms of transportation to travel to different places. It involves exploring lots of instruments and exploring improvisation. In addition this year the team are going to follow on from last year's work and develop the theme further with the reception children.
We also hope to conclude the experience with some small group visits to The Symphony Hall to see and hear the organ; watch this space for photos as we go.
We are continuing with the upkeep of the kitchen garden and noticing the changes over the year. We are also harvesting some winter vegetables and tasting the efforts of our labour. Again if anyone is interested in helping out please let us know.
At the beginning of term we will be running hand writing and letter formation meetings so that we can work together to support to support your child in this area. The meetings will only last about 15 minutes but are really valuable so please come along if you can. We will also be running some longer courses for parents to help support your children and have fun and learn yourselves. We will let you know about these nearer the time but they include Talking Tips and Play and Language.
As always you can find an overview of the nursery curriculum in " About Us". If you wish for any further information please call direct on 0121 464 4385 or come in and see us.
Regular Community Room activities-
Stay and Play - Tuesday mornings 9.15am-11.30am
Early Support Drop In - Thursday mornings - 9.00am- 11.00am
ESOL - Wednesday 1.00pm - 3.00pm
These sessions take place in the Community Room which is accessed via the main children's entrance for Reception and Key Stage 1.
The superhero play has proved to be very popular and here it has encouraged reading
Welcome to the second half of the autumn term.
The children are settled into nursery now and we would like to thank our parents for their support during this time of transition.
During the last half term the children had the opportunity to explore the nursery and all of the activities on offer. This included the nursery kitchen garden. We harvested the summer crop of carrots, leeks and beetroots. We still have a crop of spinach coriander, lettuce and cabbage to pick and we have planted some winter cabbages, cauliflowers and carrots.
The children really enjoyed the experience, dressing in the gardening clothes, digging, planting and watering. This single activity has provided many learning opportunities across the seven areas of the early years curriculum.
This project will continue as the year progresses with continued planting and tasting activities. We
would love parents to be involved in the gardening and cooking sessions so if you are interested in joining in please mention this to your key worker.
The topic for the next half term is "Our Heroes" as the children are talking about super heroes and adding them into their play. We will be including real heroes in this topic such as Mum and Dad and charity heroes such as Pudsey Bear. We will be planning many activities around this and also stimulating some new play ideas in the form of our local role plays for inside the classroom.
We will be visiting the local bakery and garage in small groups and coming back to set up these areas within our classrooms. We will notify you when your child will be going out and posting the pictures shortly.
We will be inviting you into the nursery this half term to do discuss your child's next steps and discuss their progress. Please try to attend if at all possible as we achieve the best results when school and parents work together.
We will be sending home books to share together every Wednesday. Please keep these books for one week and return them every Wednesday to chose a new one.
Even though it is colder now it is really important the children continue to use the outside classrooms as so much learning takes place there. We go out in all weathers but ensure the children are always suitably dressed.
Regular Community Room activities
Stay and play - Tuesday 9.00a.m.-11.00a.m.
ESOL classess - Wednesday 1.00p.m-3.00p.m.
Early Support Drop In - Thursday 9.00a.m.-11.00a.m.
The Community Room is accessed via the main entrance to reception and Key stage one.The front door is at the bottom of the ramp.
Welcome to the new academic year 2016/17
It is the exciting start to another new school year and we would like to welcome all the new children and parents. We would also like to welcome back Mrs Mitcham and Mrs Kelly who have both taken a year out for maternity. They will be returning to the nursery as a job share in Room 2.
This half term we will be admitting all of the new children.The start dates are staggered to enable children to settle in calmly with their key worker and to have the best possible start. We value your support during this time which can be both an exciting and challenging experience for very young children. To build on from the home visits and stay and play sessions we have a take home Beat Baby which a soft cuddly toy to pass between home and school and helps to nurture a strong link and a secure base on which to start.
Our topic for this half term will be settling in and as usual we will be planning our activities around the children's interests. We will also be completing our on entry baseline assessments in order to plan appropriate next steps for your child and inviting you in for consultations to share this information and gain your support. The best results are always achieved when school and home work together.
The kitchen garden will require some input after the summer break and some crops will be ready for harvesting. The children will also be planting their autumn crop. We would welcome any support from parents with planting, harvesting or cooking so if you are interested please let a member of staff know and we will arrange suitable times.
During the term we will be placing photographs of nursery activities and additional information on this site so please do check in regularly. Alternatively if you require any further information coming in and speak to us or call 0121 464 4385 to reach the nursery directly.
An overview of the nursery curriculum can be found in "About Us"
The community room was a great success last year and therefore many sessions will be running again this year and also some new ones. Notably we will be running an ESOL class on Wednesday afternoons and rerunning the oversubscribed volunteer training. Please see the full timetable at the end of this blog or ask in school.
Regular community room activities -
Stay and Play - Tuesday 9.15am - 11.30 am
Early Support Drop In - Thursday 9.15am - 11.15am
ESOL - Wednesday 12.30pm - 2.30pm
These sessions take place in the community room which is accessed via the main children's gate for reception and key stage one.