Wow, can you believe its February already!!!! Love is in the air as Valentines Day approaches 
Nursery Questionnaire 2014
Thank you to those of you who took the time to complete and return the questionnaires as this allows us to
reflect upon our current practice and ensure we are moving forward. We appreciate both your positive
comments and constructive suggestions. We are currently compiling the questionnaire to share the feedback
and the action plan with you for future improvements. We will continue to address the comments raised and
appreciate your feedback to ensure we are continually improving. This will be shared at the end of February
2014.
Parents Suggestions Boards
We need your input!! We have placed a new large piece of paper on the wall in the hallway and would love your
input/feedback. Please write on the paper any future changes you would like to see happen, anything you are
happy with or surprise us with your comments. This enables us to reflect on our practice and make necessary
future changes to the nursery. The Nursery will also be writing comments on the board and we would
appreciate your opinions, Please feel free to comment, Thank you in advance.
Signing in am/ pm
Can we please remind all parents to sign their children in and out each day in the registers by the front door.
This is to follow our fire procedures.
Chewing Gum/ mints - A polite request
A child within the nursery has a severe form of G6PD Deficiency and cannot come into contact
with: Anything Blue or Menthol/Mint, such as paint, food colouring, blue face paint, play dough or
Mothballs. Therefore can we please ask that no chewing gum or mints are to be eaten within the
nursery setting and can you inform a member of staff if your child or family member’s clothes are in contact
with mothballs. Can we please request that no biscuits, cakes and sweets are brought into the nursery with
blue food colouring. Thank you for your understanding and support with this. If you have any questions please
do not hesitate to speak to a member of the preschool team or Keeley and Faye. Thank you.
Spare clothes
A little note to please ask parents to name all items of clothing etc, to enable us to correctly identify and return
to the rightful owner. We are finding that several items are getting lost or added to the spare clothes box as
they are unidentified. If your clothes are unnamed it is highly likely that they will go walkies 
Tiddlers
Tiddlers would like to welcome Joseph to the room where he will be having lots of fun and meeting new friends.
 Our topic this month is winter so we will be covering messy play and sensory exploration with pretend snow,
pasta and sand allowing the children to investigate different textures and develop their senses. Tiddlers will
be mark making with paint using sponges and potatoes to make collages; this will enhance and develop their fine
motor skills. Could we please ask parents to name their child’s bottles, containers, clothes etc. Thank you in
advance.
‘No rush to mush’ (NHS Start for Life)
We have recently heard that new parents are being advised to start weaning their baby at 4 months. After
speaking to our local health visitor for clarification on this matter she has advised us to begin the weaning
process from 6 months. This allows each baby’s digestive system time to develop so that they can cope fully
with solid foods. If you have any questions regarding this matter please see a baby room member of staff who
will be able to help you further with your questions and give you a leaflet about weening.
Seahorse
Seahorses would like to welcome Atticus to the room  Our topic this month is ‘opposites’. The children have
been showing lots of interest in ‘hot and cold’ and ‘big and small’ so we will be furthering this by carrying out
different tactile activities to extend their interest developing their hand and eye coordination and fine motor
skills. We are continuing to celebrate Chinese New Year by feeling the different textures between dry and
cooked noodles and rice, this will encourage the children’s vocabulary as they respond to what they feel and
smell. As it is the month of love we will be showing how much we love our loved ones by making valentine cards
using a variety of different coloured paints and marbles to create a marble effect valentine card. The
seahorses will be offered a range of different resources such as collage pieces, pens and paint to make their
very own Canadian flag. This links to the EYFS areas of learning expressive art and design and understanding
the world. The seahorses would like to say a huge thank you for the selection of toys that have been donated.
It is very much appreciated and the children will have lots of fun exploring the new toys 
Goldfish
Goldfish will be exploring their understanding of the world by marking Chinese New year by creating a Chinese
restaurant roleplay area which will allow the children to practice their fine motor skills by attempting to hold
and use the chopsticks. We will also be busy making and decorating lanterns with paint and glitter to mark the
Lantern festival. Goldfish will be experimenting with a variety of tactile resources, focusing on smells and
textures to stimulate our senses and encourage our communication and language skills. During
February Goldfish will be talking about seasons and creating a display. They will be looking at the
colours of leaves and objects from the garden. We are hoping for snow so we can explore and make
different marks in it. For Valentine’s Day we will be making biscuits and to mark Canadian National
Flag day we will be using paints and collage material to make our own flags, allowing us to be creative and use
our turn taking skills.
Seashells
The Seashells interests from home have mainly been counting and letters so we have made a roleplay post
office where the children can look at different letters of the alphabet and talk about which letter their name
begins with. The children will be writing letters and posting them in the seashells post box as well as using
stamps to develop on number recognition. Counting and letters will be featuring throughout our planning over
the next few weeks including singing counting and alphabet songs, looking at alphabet books, and playing a
variety of maths games. This will enable us to cover maths, communication, physical development, literacy and
understanding of the world areas of the EYFS. In order to link the roleplay area and real life Seashells are
planning a walk to the post office so if any parents would like to join us please speak to a member of staff and
we would be happy to have you accompany us .
Extending on the children’s interest in numbers we will also be creating a maths display that the children will
decorate large numbers and mark make their versions of shapes to continue their maths knowledge. To mark
Valentine’s Day Seashells will be using a variety of materials such as paint, collage pieces and glitter to
decorate hearts to make a Valentines Day mobile for their valentine covering the expressive art and design
area of learning. On the 15th it is National Flag of Canada day which is when Canadians celebrate the flag being
raised over parliament hill in Ottawa for the first time. Seashells will mark this by making individual
Canadian flags using red and white paint and leaf printing. This links with understanding of the world
and expressive art and design.
Starfish
We have been developing our graphics area and have increased the number of resources that are available for
the children. The children now have diaries, post-its and envelopes along with many more items and we keep it
stocked so that it is available at any time of the day. We have created a graphics display entitled ‘Words are
all around you’. This can be a discussion point with the children as a one to one resource. It displays the many
ways that words are used in day to day situations including road signs, food, publications, letter and technology.
You may wish to have a look at the postcards and passports that the children have created. These are
displayed on the mark making wall at child level and by making these postcards etc… it helps the children to
give meanings to marks that they see in different places and we can see the progression that the children have
made.
We have also been spending time on creating on going role plays from which we can branch off and complete
other tasks that hit all seven of the EYFS specific areas. Our first one was the Chinese Takeaway and
restaurant. The children could go into the restaurant and cook their own food, sit at a laid table, and order off
the menu. They had a phone and till so that it felt authentic for them. We made Chinese fans, Chinese trees
and Chinese bowls from salt dough. They enjoyed tactile play with noodles and rice. Our most recent role play
has been that of a travel agent helping the children to understand the world around them. The Starfish have a
post office, bureau de change and travel agent. There are many travel magazines. We have a map of the world
on the wall with children’s postcards and pictures from the Starfish’s travels and an inflatable globe. One
branch off is that of weather, hot or cold, what would you choose?
Pre School
January 31st saw the start of the Chinese New Year and in preparation, the children started celebrating the
Year of the Horse by discussing the animals of their year, which for our older ones is the Ox, and for our
younger ones; the Tiger. The children have really enjoyed using their Creative and Imaginative skills to
explore the Chinese New Year already - you have seen and commented on the beautiful fans and
horse drawings that the children themselves decided to make on the spur of the moment, which was
not even in our newsletter last month! The children used their fine Motor skills and folded their
own fans and decorated them with a variety of textures and colours. So much to cram in, we have
all really enjoyed this celebration. This month the theme continues nicely into the Chinese
Lantern Festival. To this end, we will be extending our Knowledge of the World and keeping our
Chinese restaurant for another week and using our Creative skills again to make our lanterns to hang
around it and making ox, horse and tiger masks to celebrate this exciting festival. After this, we will be
turning the role play area into a Doctor’s / vets surgery, as indicated by several parent/child interests; thank
you to Finley’s mum for the kind donation of bandages!
‘Book of the Month’, to complement our Literacy and Communication skills, is this month The Bear Hunt, a great
favourite throughout the nursery! We will using our Large Motor skills by going on our own bear hunt round the
garden, using the readily available materials of mud, water, grass and, hopefully by then, snow! We will be
turning our theme table into a small world bear hunt, reading the story, drawing and collaging bear pictures and
we may consider a bear cave in the both the role play area and the garden at the end of the month…
Due also to popular interest, we are looking to introduce more model making into our busy day, to extend our
Imaginative skills. Thank you to the many parents who have already donated boxes and tubes – our model
making box is now overflowing, so you can expect to see many interesting creations coming home over the next
few weeks. We will be using our Maths skills to sort all the different sizes and shapes you have given us and
counting each set that we make. We are in the process of revamping our literacy and home corner so your food
labels and boxes are still very much appreciated!
Furthering our Understanding of the World we will be using our PSED teamwork skills to create a large
Canadian flag for ‘National flag of Canada Day’ by using a variety of collage materials and discussing Canada and
drawing maple leaves, making leaf prints and trying some maple syrup pancakes! Valentines Day falls this month
and as a way to celebrate and thank our loved ones, we will be using our Creative skills to make cards and cakes
in pre-school. Finally, we are currently looking into ways to make the cloakroom less crowded and have moved
the boots to a boot shelf, slippers to the children’s trays and put away the baskets of children who are not in
that day. We hope this will help ease the congestion plus enable the floors to be swept more effectively!
Schools out
Schools Out will be open from Monday 17th until Friday 21st February and is being held at Little Paxton School.
That’s all for this month!!