News

January 2012
Welcome back to a new term and a new year.

We hope everyone enjoyed the Christmas festivities and we wish you all a very happy new year.

All the staff would like to thank you for your kind wishes, cards, gifts etc.

We also have new children and parents joining us this term and would like to welcome them to the pre-school.

Congratulations to Lisa who got married during the Christmas break. She is now on her honeymoon and will return to pre-school Wednesday 18th January. Heather will act up as Room Leader and Pippa will cover Lisa's sessions. Pippa has previously worked at the pre-school and is NVQ3 qualified in Early Years Education and care.

As always our planning is centred more round the children's individual interests and next steps in their development. We do however have a loose topic woven into our activities which this half term is Food. Incorporated within this topic will be Chinese New Year, Pancake Day and Red Nose Day (details to follow). Our role play area will be changed into a Cafe where children will be encouraged to mark make when writing their menus and taking meal orders! When discussing the different foods, assistants will be encouraging the children who are able, to use their letters and sounds knowledge to think about the phonetic sounds they hear. Some children may be ready to further their knowledge into their mark making. Children will also be sorting and counting items e.g money, comparing two plates of food and being able to use mathematical language - more than/less than/one more and matching quantity to numerals.

If anyone has anything that would be of interest to the children that would support our topic, we would love to hear from you e.g. Chinese clothes, photographs or anything maybe with Chinese writing on.

In the event of snow and possible closure of the Pre-school, the procedure we follow is if Lapworth Primary School is closed then we will do likewise. Insufficient staff cover can also be another reason why the pre-school would have to close. Our advice is to look on the Lapworth Primary School website: www.lapworthschool.co.uk which is usually updated by 7.15 am. The Pre-school website: www.lapworthpreschool.co.uk. is also usually updated to confirm closure.

Please ensure the Pre-school is always kept updated with any change in details e.g. contact details, medical conditions including any food allergies etc. We would also like to highlight that we can only let your child go home with a person listed on your Contact Information form or if you have informed a member of staff of another person who will collect your child. Even if we are familiar with the person you have asked to collect your child, we still need permission from yourself for that person to take them. As an added communication, we ask for you to note who is taking your child home (other than the usual adult that collects) on the whiteboard which is situated to the left of the toddler room door.