Dear Parents
I do hope you all enjoyed some sort of summer break. It is so lovely to be back and we have all enjoyed welcoming
our returning children and parents as well as getting to know the new ones. We certainly have a very special group
of children and we look forward to a fun-filled term.
Sports Hall Visits
The Nursery unit (3and 4 year olds) will begin their visits to the sports hall on Friday 8th October. We will leave this
building at 10.15 a.m. every Friday morning so if you intend to arrive after that time then please go straight to
Exercise Studio 1 and join us there. The children will enjoy an hour of exercise, dance drama and games and we
will make the most of the enclosed large safe space. Please make sure that you child always wears “sensible
shoes” i.e. shoes or trainers that don’t come off when the children are running and that protect their feet. Nursery
unit parents only are invited to watch the children Nativity production on Friday Dec 17th at 10.15 a.m. It usually
lasts just under an hour. I know some of you find it difficult to get time off to watch this so I hope I have given you
enough notice and that by making it at the end of the semester that lectures will have finished by then.
Parking I’m sorry to keep on about parking, it’s not something I want to do particularly at the beginning of term but I
am still getting complaints about parents without babies parking in the 4 lower spaces. Student parents in particular
suffer if they have to wait for others to vacate these spaces first thing in the morning as they then invariable cant
find a parking space on campus and have to pay another £3.00 to park. If we cannot resolve this problem ourselves
then I am afraid I will need to involve Estate Patrol and perhaps have different parking slips for Baby Unit parents.
Perhaps I should remind you that when accepting the place you have all agree to conform to the parking
arrangements.
Open Evening. We are planning to hold an open evening here at the Family Centre on Thursday 21st October from
5.30 until 7.00 p.m. for students and staff working at the University. The main purpose of the session is to raise our
profile within the university, to let parents know about the services we offer here and what good facilities we offer. If
any parent feels they would like to be around to talk to prospective parents then please let me know. Unfortunately
we are not able to offer child care facilities at the same time
I do hope you and your children have settled down and are happy with the facilities and service we offer. If you are
unhappy about anything either now or in the future and your key carer cant help you then please do let me know. I
particularly want to know if your lecture times don’t fit in with our opening times. I am usually available between 8.45
and 10.00 most mornings. Liz or Henry will make an appointment for you if you can’t find me. A quick email about
any on corresponding lecture times will do if you are busy.Do come and see me though if you have a problem, it
doesn’t matter how small. Best Wishes
Val
News from the Units
Nursery Unit.
The Nursery children returned eager to see what had
happened to the crops in the garden and poly-tunnel.
They were met with a bumper crop of runner beans and
tomatoes which they enjoyed harvesting and sharing
with their friends in the other units, either cooked as
part of the lunch or enjoyed as part of teatime snacks.
Our pumpkin is just about at full-size and measures
123cm in circumference. We will soon be looking for
pumkin recipes to use after it has been carved into a
happy face to be the centre of out harvest celebration.
Eager tomato pickers
We shall be learning about our bodies during the first part of the term so we drew around a child to create a
template to make people for our display board. We had so many volunteers that this turned into a free play
activity with the children taking turns being the model and doing the drawing.
There were some strange sights in the Nursery room as children paraded with their ‘brain function hats’ on.
We discussed how important our brains are and how it helps control parts of our bodies, i.e. eyes, hands etc.
Toddler Unit
As we have a lot of new children in the
Toddler Unit we have been focusing on
promoting social contact and encouraging the
formation of friendships through developing
physical skills, such as ball-rolling.
Our interest focus this term is Books. We
have read The Crunching Munching Caterpillar
and then made our own number caterpillars,
encouraging the children to count and start
to recognise numerals. We also made stringpaintings of butterflies.
To celebrate
the muslim
festival of Eidel- Fitr, which
marks the
breaking of
the fast at the
end of
Ramadan, we
made moon and
star mobiles.
Parallel Unit
The new and existing children have been settling in well
together and have enjoyed a variety of creative
activities,especially getting very messy with the paints.
Focusing on our theme of ‘Under the Sea’ the children
used cars and rollers in the paint to create ‘seaweed’.
The variety of different marks made a dramatic picture.
The children have loved exploring the activity
complex, developing physical skills such as
climbing and tunnel-crawling.
Baby Unit
The focus so far this term has been mainly on settling the
children in: even for those who have attended before it seems
strange after the long summer break.
As part of establishing a routine they have been learning new
skills such as brushing their teeth and developing, independent
skills such as feeding themselves.
The children have had plenty of outside play-time to explore their new environment, visiting the activity
complex and riding on the sit-on toys.
They have had the opportunity to investigate a variety of objects and materials: bottle-tops, bubbles, dried
pasta, musical instruments, as well as using hands to mark-make with table-painting.