Jubilee News September 2018

We are delighted to see children becoming very familiar with their new rooms and settling in well. It’s also great to see so many examples of fantastic practice happening across the nursery. Practitioners are busy planning lots of great activity with the children and there is much to look forward to in rooms over the coming month. September is always a great month and we are making the most of getting outdoors, as we always like to do. We have been harvesting crops with Annie the gardener, preparing food, spending lots of time in the woods and paddock and children even made their own scarecrow! One of our farmers, Cheryl, will also be working more closely with the children to develop ever closer links and enable everyone to be more actively involved in the life of the farm which is great news.

Thank you to all of our Pre-school parents who came long to the ‘Introduction to Pre-School’ meeting. It was lovely to see so many of you there and we hope it was a useful opportunity to find out more about what will be a very important year for your children in preparing them for their onward learning journey. For more information around schools and forthcoming open evenings in the area, keep a look out for our display in the entrance.

With very best wishesLesley and the Jubilee Day Nursery Team

Welcome

Dates for your Diary 2018-19

Christmas: Jubilee Day Nursery is closed over the Christmas week: 25th December to 1st January. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE CLOSE AT 4PM ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

Nursery re-opens (normal opening hours) 2nd January 2019

Bank Holidays (Nursery will be closed on these dates)

Winter Wonderland Walk 2.00pm

Join us for an afternoon of carols, activities and magical wonder with a special visitor from lapland as we enjoy our annual Winter Wonderland Walk to our woodland.

Friday 7th December

Nursery Photographs

Nursery photographs are back from the photography studio and need to be collected and returned to the office by 1st October. Thank you!

Outdoor Clothing

Please ensure children all have the following items in nursery every day. Even as the weather gets colder, we still spend lots of time outdoors.

A warm waterproof coat, an all-in-one waterproof or waterproof dungaree style trousers and jacket, spare clothes a pair of (well fitting) wellies, warm socks, gloves and a hat. Please ensure all items are labelled with your child’s name.

As the children get older they spend more time using our outdoor resources including the mud kitchen, water channelling and down at the stream, these are all-year-round activities and wind and waterproof dungaree-style trousers and unlined jackets are ideal in the summer and in the winter fleeces can be added. Some tried and tested ones include the Didriksons range and JoJo Maman Bebe. H&M also do dungaree style trousers and packs of gloves at a reasonable price.

We have also secured a 10% discount for Jubilee parents from the Warm Welly Company. You can view their items at www.warmwellies.co.uk The discount code is JDN10

Polite reminder for road, car park and nursery safety

Can we remind all parents/carers to accompany children by hand to and from your cars. Please also drive slowly into car parks, adhering to the speed limits and consider parents who are getting children in and out of vehicles. We all treasure our children and would not like to see any harm caused unnecessarily.

Please help us to maintain the security of the nursery at all times. We would ask all parents and carers not to open the doors to other people unless you recognise them as our parents and staff. Please ensure all doors and gates are securely closed upon entering or leaving the building.

Little Whispers Discount Code

One of our kind parents has a children’s store and is offering a discount code to parents of Jubilee. Little Whispers stock sustainably sourced wooden toys, eco home wear and children’s and baby clothing including beautiful Hatley rain coats. Go to www.littlewhispers.co.uk The current 10% off code is conker and this code is updated every couple of months. You can follow the Facebook group ‘little whispers group’ where there are competitions, new product launches and sales.

Chatter Matters: Your monthly tip to get children talking from Fran, our ECAT Champion

Good communication with children, alongside plenty of talking, also involves listening well and talking in ways that encourage your child to listen to you. It’s like any other skill – you get better with practice. Set aside time for talking and listening to each other. Family meals can be a great time to do this. To let your child know you’re listening, and to make sure you’ve really understood the important messages your child is telling you, repeat back what they have said and make lots of eye contact.

Staff News

A warm welcome to Annabella who joins the team in Treetops and brings with her teaching experience from Hungary, another warm welcome to Vicky who is also joining our team in Treetops. We are pleased to welcome Gabriella who will start with us in Badgers in October.

Reviews

We have received some truly wonderful reviews from parents in the last few weeks and we are all delighted. Thank you! Should you wish to give us a review, then you can do so through our Facebook page, Google or by going to www.daynurseries.co.uk

Parent Portal

Don’t forget you can access policies, notices, recipes, useful articles and much more on our Parent Portal. If you are having trouble logging in or you think you have not received your credentials, contact marketing@jubileedaynursery.co.uk

A request for help – cardboard boxes

Can you help some very eager builders? Each week, Pre-school are carrying out their own ‘Big Build’ using cardboard boxes. We need these to be really big! So if you have any large appli-ance size boxes at home we would be very grateful if you could donate them to us. This is an ongoing weekly project so if you don’t have anything now - do think of us in the future. We have lots of children with big ideas depending on you! Thank you.

This time of year is rich with opportunity for getting outside with you children and provides many learning opportunities and a sense of calm and well-being for everyone.

At Jubilee the value of natural space, our animals and outdoor experiences for children are intrinsic to who we are and what we are all about. Babies and young children are always exploring and investigating. They find out about the world through sensory exploration, discovering through touch, sight, sound, taste, smell and movement. Sensory experience is food for the brain; each sensory interaction promotes new connections supporting the developing brain.

The sensory experiences naturally offered by the outdoors are in abundance and at Jubilee we are very lucky to have incredible surroundings, the farm animals and a woodland with stream to facilitate this.

Jess, our teacher in Pre-school takes the children on sound walks through our grounds. Everyone listens very carefully to the sounds they can hear around them. The children walk for a while and then stop and are very quiet and still and they talk about the sounds they can hear with each other and practitioners. It’s a great way of introducing key concepts such as observing, classifying, comparing and communicating. Children are also presented with new vocabulary terms like quiet, noisy, loud and soft. Building sensory and language development, sound walks also help children to learn and discover new listening skills. This is all vital for good reading and writing.

Carol and the team in Woodpeckers have been taking children out on nature walks and they have spent time collecting natural items to bring back with them for use in their activities and who doesn’t enjoy the satisfaction of jumping and stamping through crunchy leaves?!

Holly and the children in Hedgehogs have been looking for natural treasure (such as blackberries) on their trips out and the children have been greatly enthused and able to walk farther as a result.

Through this type of practice, our practitioners frequently act as facilitators, using multi-sensory and experiential approaches which encourage children to become involved in emotional, physical, aesthetic, spiritual and cognitive experiences as part of their learning.

There are so many benefits from spending time outdoors but what is hugely important in this fast-paced world is that children have the time and space to relax. The state of the brain is hugely important for creativity. It is hard to be creative when there is persistent focus only on a task. Having spaces and time for quieter relaxation and observation of people and nature is important to nurture creativity and provide opportunity for reflection.

The many benefits of the outdoor environment for effective learning

Introduction to Pre-School evening

It was great to see so many of our Pre-school parents come along to our meeting this month to find out about this important year where children gradually start getting ready for school. We hope you found it useful to find out more about how Pre-school is structured and what your child will be learning over this important year from our teachers and practitioners.

One of the key messages to take away from the evening was around communication and building a skill base for literacy development. Talking to your child as much as possible and finding opportunities to extend their vocabulary is so important for building the foundations for the next stage in your child’s learning journey. Play with words, use nonsense words and make your child laugh; give them a great start by looking at rhyming books together and introducing lots of rhyme into your daily routine. Research into the development and acquisition of early literacy skills has conclusively shown that rhythm and rhyme play a hugely important role. This is because children’s early literacy skills are about listening and speaking rather than reading and writing. These first two skills are the bedrock foundation for the latter, and create much stronger ability in the latter if ingrained deeply and early on.

If you have any questions following on from the meeting or if you were unable to attend, then do please come and talk to Jess and the Treetops team who will be happy to chat anything through with you.

You will also find useful phonics and Forest School handouts from the evening in Treetops.

It’s official – Gems is a Good Egg!

We are pleased to announce our sister term-time nursery Jubilee Gems have received another glowing report from Ofsted. Jubilee Gems continues to be recognised as Good following their latest inspection at the beginning of September.

The report highlighted that ‘children and babies are happy, confident and independent learners who enjoy choosing and following their own play ideas from a well-resourced environment.’

It also noted staff are ‘consistently kind, caring and patient and positive role models for children, who learn to behave well and confidently consider the needs of others.’

Safeguarding at the nursery was deemed effective with ‘staff having a secure understanding’ and ‘attentive in their supervision of children’.

Inspectors also highlighted how well staff support children’s communication skills and how babies are ‘very confident and develop good early physical skills.’

The report goes on to surmise children at Jubilee Gems are well prepared for the next stage in their learning and for school.

We are delighted the latest report details so many very positive features which reflect what we already know and the experience of families at our nurseries and school holiday clubs. The report is testament to the hard work and commitment of all members of the Jubilee team: children, staff and parents.

Meadows

Bluebells have been having great fun with sensory play this month. The babies enjoyed edible painting with yoghurt, feeling the textures of broccoli and jelly, created their own sandcastles and experienced the feel of sand through their fingers and toes.

Practitioners have been encouraging lots of music and Bluebells have been creating their own rhythms with the instruments in the room.

Poppies have been exploring in the rainforest. Practitioners created an edible jungle of jelly, broccoli and green beans for the animals to explore in. The children went on to make music with rainmakers and even created their own waterfalls to listen to the sounds and see how the water drops.

As ever, the room has been a hive of creativity with feather parrots, shiny snakes, sponge printed monkeys and footprint crocodiles on display after a busy week of arts and crafts.

The baby areas have been revamped and we hope you all agree that the new areas for the children look lovely with their dedicated sand play, small world play, sensory, soft and free play zones.

Woodpeckers have been very busy spending lots of time outside, exploring the senses and natural environments. They’ve been busy collecting lots of natural items on their walks and using these to paint and make their own art with.

The children have had their own sensory corner with lots of different textures to feel and talk about with practitioners.

They’ve enjoyed the smells of scented water, mint, lavender, herbs and lots of other things they picked in the sensory garden. The children have been busy in the greenhouse helpfully picking tomatoes which they have smelled and tasted. The last of the blackberries have also been put to good use for painting projects too!

Bluebells, Poppies & Woodpeckers

Woodlands

Badgers & Hedgehogs

Badgers have all been enjoying the book ‘Dear Zoo’ and went on to make their own safari animal prints with paint.

The children were dino-mad this month as they washed the dinosaurs, went on a di-no-hunt, painted their own dinosaurs, enjoyed themed small world play and had fun with lots of related stories and songs.

The children learnt the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ with practitioners and this brought up lots of comparative language around size. The children made three different sized pizzas with practitioners, mixed, made and ate their own porridge for snack. There’s been lots of puppetry in singing and story time and the children even sized bears to beds!

Hedgehogs have been on the farm (literally and in the room!) They have been very busy cleaning muddy toy farm animals, making animal biscuits and going to visit the animals. All of this has encouraged some great vocabulary.

The children have been busy with lots of themed messy play with lots of mud, water, and straw.

Dinosaurs have also proved popular in Hedgehogs and everyone has enjoyed exploring different textures in themed tuff spots, ‘Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs’ stories and many arts and craft activities.

The children have enjoyed lots of related stories to all their topics and have also been working hard to listen to stories and finish sentences. Well done Hedgehogs!

Orchards

Ladybirds & Bumblebees

The children in Orchards have immersed themselves into a world of colour. The children have been learning lots of different colours with practitioners and going on colour hunts. The wonderful book, ‘Handa’s Surprise’ has been used alongside fruit tasting and exploration of the different coloured fruits.

Of course, Orchards are always on the move and on the go and they love to get out and about exploring – so the natural environment has been a great way for children to spot colours and talk about how the leaves are slowly starting to change colour. There’s always lots of cooking activity up in Orchards and the children loved making brightly coloured pizzas using different vegetables for their tea.

Friendships amongst this group are really forming and it’s great to see those lasting relationships amongst the children really starting to blossom now. Next month Orchards are going to be embracing everything to do with harvest and all that the wonderfully rich autumn season brings to relate back to some fantastic early years activity.

We’ll be carrying out lots of outdoor learning this year as a group and Paula will be heading this up with the children assuring outdoor adventures galore.

Tawny Owls & Snowy Owls

Treetops have been busily settling in to their new routines with the team. The key focus for Pre-school is school readiness and staff ensure children have an enjoyable year developing their confidence and preparing for the expec-tations of school life. The children have group times which encourage listening and speaking skills and it is an opportunity to dive deeper into the books we are reading. Our focus is very much on high quality texts and we have recently enjoyed reading two of popular au-thor, Tom Percival’s books: ‘Perfectly Norman’ and ‘Ruby’s Worry’. Watch a clip of ‘Ruby’s Worry’ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUPGUmEzpQE

The children have loved their farms topic and to accompany this there has been lots of sensory play with media such as play dough and brown rice.

There was great fun as the children raced ducks using spray bottles to move them. Activities such as this help to build muscles in fingers in preparation for writing.

Everyone loved making our life-sized scarecrow and it was an opportunity to learn about what they are, sing ‘Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow’ and link to the Julia Donaldson story – ‘The Scarecrow’s Wedding’.

Phonics preparation has begun by reading ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and going on a sound walk to see what Treetops could hear. The children became scientists by testing their theory as to what crops need to grow using celery sticks and coloured water.

Treetops

We have explored many different fruit and vegetables and this proved to be a great opportunity to build language and talk about texture, smell and taste as well as introducing children to different tastes.

The children have also been looking at the topic ‘All about me’. The children have been learning what their bodies can do by catching, jumping and climbing and enjoyed some large scale mark making by drawing around our bodies.

We have started Ritedance and Stickykids dance, music and movement programmes which will develop the muscles needed for pencil control.

The children have measured themselves and we are going to see how we grow over the year! This is a great exercise for language of comparison.

We have explored Annie’s garden and used our senses as we enjoyed the smells of lavender, herbs and lemonbalm.

We have also talked about feelings and families and linked to some great non-fiction books.

The children have done lots of work around their names and enjoyed sticking seeds on to their names and have begun to recognise their own names in text.

We are zooming off to space this week but we’ll save that for next time. As you can see, we’ve all been pretty busy!

Meet the Teacher

For those of you who don’t know, we have a fully qualified teacher – Jess Davies - who leads practice in our Pre-School (Treetops). Having teachers in early years settings bring huge benefits:

Firstly and most importantly early years teachers make a difference for young children leading to better outcomes ensuring the foundations are solid and children are ready for school. Jess has had a long and varied career in education over the past thirteen years, having worked as a primary school teacher, a Deputy Head, an Acting Headteacher and a Leading Literacy Teacher for Hampshire’s Local Education Authority. Her roles (and passion!) in education have always revolved around Early Years and, in particular, early reading, writing and communication.

“I am a firm believer that children learn best through play and fun! All of our activities inPre-school are designed to give children a fun, challenging and rewarding learning experience, while supporting their journey to ‘school readiness’.”

Jubilee’s school holiday clubs – book for October half-term!

If you have, or know of, a primary school aged child needing childcare over the school holidays- we have two great holiday clubs to choose from with flexible sessions to suit your needs.

Jubilee Cadets, our outdoor club, is based entirely in

our magical woodland and ensures children have plenty

of fresh air and adventure over the holidays. From den

building, wood whittling to creating a perfect mud pie!

There is something for everyone, so come and join the

adventure!

For further information or to book, please visit:

www.jubileecadets.co.uk

Jubilee Jets is a high energy, action-packed free play club based at Jubilee Gems and opens during the West Berkshire school holidays. Children can choose from team games and sports, baking, arts and crafts, construction and much more.

For further information or to book, please visit:

www.jubileejets.co.uk

Dawn’s Recipe Corner

Dhal

This dhal is great for children and spinach and lentils are fabulous to get much-prized iron into children’s diets and the squeeze of lemon gives a little hit of vitamin C, which helps with iron absorption. The flat breads make a delicious accompaniment and are easy for children to make.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp oil• 1 onion finely chopped• 1 garlic clove crushed• 1 tsp finely grated ginger• (optional) 1 red chilli, finely chopped

Method 1. Heat oil in a heavy based pan, add onion and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring

occasionally.

2. Add garlic, ginger and chilli (if using) and cook for one minute then add spices and cook for a further minute.

3. Turn up the heat to medium and add sweet potato and stir everything together so that the potato is well coated in the spice mix.

4. Tip in the lentils, stock and seasoning. Bring the liquid to the boil.

5. Then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes or until the lentils are tender and sweet potato is cooked but still holding its shape.

6. Add the baby spinach leaves as they are, or, if your child isn’t keen on spinach then whizz the raw leaves in a food processor till finely chopped and add to the dhal. Cook for a fur-ther two minutes. Just before you serve, add a squeeze of lemon juice and stir in.

7. Serve with flat breads or rice.

• 1 ½ tsp turmeric• 1 ½ tsp cumin• 2 sweet potatoes cut into chunks• 250g red lentils• 800ml low-salt vegetable stock• 80g bag of baby spinach• A squeeze of lemon juice

Flat bread Ingredients

• 100g plain flour• 200g plain wholemeal flour• Pinch of salt• 100 fl oz warm water• 2 tbsp olive oil (extra for cooking)

Method 1. Put flour and pinch of salt into a large bowl.

2. Add two tablespoons of olive oil and work into the flour with finger tips.

3. Gradually add the water a little at a time, bringing the dough together with your hands. If the dough is too sticky then add a little more flour.

4. Tip: do not wash sticky, doughy hands! Instead add a little flour and rub hands together to remove the dough.

5. Knead the dough for about five minutes until it is a smooth, soft consistency. You can use dough immediately or cover with cling film and leave to rest for 30 mins.

6. Divide the dough into four to six balls – depending on the size of flat bread you want.

7. On a clean, lightly floured surface, roll out the flatbreads to about 5mm thick.

8. Add a drizzle of olive oil to a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.

9. Cook each flat bread for approximately two minutes on each side. Pop into a warm oven covered with a clean tea towel to keep warm while you make the rest.

Did you know?

We encourage children to engage in growing, preparing and understanding food. We know from robust research* that making healthy eating decisions right from the start impacts a child’s future educational attainment and their eating habits, lifestyle and well-being in years to come.

*The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)

The Month in Pictures

Rectory Rd, Padworth Common,

Reading,BerkshireRG7 4JD

Telephone: 0118 970 1600

Email: info@jubileedaynursery.co.uk Visit our website www.jubileedaynursery.co.uk

Our duty to safeguard and protect your child / children is of the greatest importance to us. As parents and carers, there are ways you can help. Please ALWAYS sign your child / children in / out of nursery and ensure that gates / doors are locked shut behind you. For the welfare of all children in our care, please do not be afraid to challenge anyone you do not know, or recognise. If you are questioned by another parent, please do not be offended! Should you see or hear anything which causes you concern, please speak to a member of management.

Need some inspiration?

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/JubileeNursery/

Stay updated with the latest news

https://www.facebook.com/JubileeDayNursery/

Our social media channels