To our dear parents and carers,

News of our opening and home learning plans from now until 18th November can be found at the end of this newsletter in the housekeeping section.  First, though, I wanted to focus on all the positive things we have been doing this week, before addressing the most pressing issue which is of course on all of our minds.

This week at Nursery School

This week it was really great to welcome the children back into the Nursery School garden after their half term break. And, we have had a glorious 4-day week where we have all stayed predominantly outdoors, except for some creative pattern-making workshops which we have run in the indoor classroom.  Among many other experiences, learning and games this week.

We have remembered the names and shapes of zigzags, wavy lines, dots, straight lines and circles in different media.  We watched a fireworks video and then made our own night skies, filled with exploding patterns.

It is super to see children beginning to use the mark-making work they have done in group times independently and watch as different types of marks appear in their own drawing and pre-writing.

We also followed the story of Mr Pattern whom we had to cheer up as his patterns had dropped off!

We then made rockets on the decking outdoors and soared them around the garden.

Links to home learning

Try this adapted song at home – (to the tune of aeroplanes, aeroplanes all in a row – from This Little Puffin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDH-WDBsiM

Fireworks fireworks fly up in the sky

Fireworks fireworks ever so high

Now its so still and dark and hush

Up goes a rocket in a great rush

Now they are whizzing and banging and weeee

Shiny and sparkly bright colours we see

swirling and twirling and crashing and flashing

swirling and twirling and crashing and flashing

ffffffffffffffffffff

tzsssssssssssssssssssss

pop, bang, weeeee  (etc)

(words by Morag!)

We finished off the week with an opportunity to learn how to be safe around fireworks and a bonfire with a fabulous fire circle in the wild area where we all had hot dogs and hot chocolate;  discussed the fire and added Georgia’s magic powder which turned the flames different colours for 10 minutes; we learnt how to step outside the circle and walk around; and finally watched a teacher disappear in a cloud of steam as she showed everyone how water puts out fire.

Among these highlights have been many lovely moments of children making progress in their friendship groups and learning, coming back to school ready to keep building  their confidence to talk to each other and try out their growing social skills: ask someone’s name; suggest taking turns; playing together; solving problems; feeling confident to interact as they work; and nurturing their sense of belonging to a safe and fun community.

We have been and will continue to keep all of the children as safe as we possibly can under the current circumstances of the second Covid 19 spike.  Outdoor learning has resulted in fewer couoghs and colds and more resilient children than is usual for this time of year.  However, most unfortunately, this brings us to the last and important matter of this week’s confirmed case of Covid 19 in our nursery school.

Notices and housekeeping COVID 19 update

As you will all know by now through the letters which were sent out by Helen yesterday afternoon, we have had a Covid 19 test come back positive for one of the children in nursery school.  This has resulted in those children and staff members, who were in contact with this child, on Tuesday, having to self-isolate for the following 14 days.  We will welcome back these staff and children on Wednesday18th November 2020.  In the meantime we will keep Nursery School open for children who were not in contact by joining with our pre-school setting for morning sessions only.  There will be a team of us available to talk through any questions you have, either by phone or email during the next seven school days from 8am till 1pm each day.

Each parent and carer is by now aware of which category their child falls in and what they need to do until the 18th November, when we can all come back together and resume our sessions as normal. Of course, if there is any change to this, we will let you know as soon as possible.

The main consideration when planning to offer sessions largely in the outdoors was so that cross-infection is less likely in the event that we had a positive case of covid-19 in our community. We have sought the best advice and kept our system of controls under constant review and hope that all the measures we have in place prove effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

Thank you so much for all responding to the tighter covid safeguarding procedures that were outlined in the letter you received on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Your support is much appreciated.

May we take this chance to wish you a safe next few weeks as we all look after each other as best we can.  We will be here to support your children however we can, so don’t hesitate to contact us if you need to through the nursery school email.

Next week’s home-school learning

There will be home learning links to videos, songs, lessons and stories on-line, which our team will put together for you. We will send these out to you via the nursery school email from Monday 9th November.  In the meantime, you could start with the link to Morag’s firework song which we sang this week and maybe make your own firework at home while you sing the words!

With our best wishes for this coming difficult time

Love from

The ACE Centre Nursery School Team