HARLEQUIN PARENT CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER 2023

What a fantastic year we have had in 2023. We have welcomed lots of new children and had to say goodbye to some as well. Especially all our school leavers in August, who we still miss. We have had new staff join us and even though some have left we have had a great team who the children have all created close bonds with.

This year we have opened up our community library and we have loved seeing our families access it and read stories together on the bench. We have achieved our platinum award for the woodland trust and continued to hold our green flag award for eco schools.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We all hope you enjoy a break and can spend lots of time with family and friends.

Learning focus at the moment

Pre-school

In pre-school this year we have started our weekly Science kitchen sessions. Our children have become really good at chopping, mixing and cooking some extremely yummy foods that they have taken home to sometimes share with their families.

We have also been taking part in a monthly STEM challenge which is Science, technology, engineering and maths. We have had some brilliant ideas including making a car and a shadow puppet box. The children have been thinking very logically about how they can make these things and have all done a great job of helping to make everything.

We have been continuing to take part in forest school sessions with Simon when he has been with us. We have loved making dens, water filters and bark rubbing, we are looking forward to continuing these in the new year.

We have also started visiting our local care home Cleveland House on a Wednesday morning. It has been so much fun to go and join in with the residents doing activities and playing games with them. This is something else we will continue in the new year and are looking forward to continuing to meet more residents and join in with lots more exciting things.

We have also started our Spanish sessions again on a Tuesday afternoon which is great fun and the children have been doing really well learning the songs. We are all very excited when Jade comes in and we love joining in both in English and Spanish.

Toddlers

We have had a great year with our toddler children. We have had a big focus on gardening this year. We have planted lots of yummy herbs and vegetables. We have had: strawberries, tomatoes, onions, carrots as well as lemongrass and mint. Even though sometimes we didn’t always get to try the food because the cheeky squirrel got there first.

We have also had lots of fun dancing and doing movement games listening to instructions in music and then moving that way. We have then added this new skill to painting with our feet and hands creating big artwork.

Like our pre-school children our toddlers have also joined in with the STEM challenges and particularly enjoyed our pumpkin challenge when we were ordering them by sizes and cutting them open to see what was inside of them, we were amazed by how many seeds there were.

Babies

Our babies have had lots of fun learning yoga this year. By copying the adults making animal shapes with their bodies they have all tried really hard and managed to copy some successfully.

They have had lots of fun exploring outside and have even gone into the forest school a couple of times and done a sound walk. This has been really good for our babies well-being creating lots of happy smiley faces.

We have also loved our balancing dome that we got earlier in the year. It has been really relaxing and our babies have loved going in together and sharing books or going in on their own and spinning around.

Outdoor Learning Focus

All year round we have had a great time playing outdoors and having visits from Simon and doing forest school. We have done lots of fun things, made weather catchers, cave paintings, den building and many more exciting things.

We have had a brilliant time playing outdoors in the colder weather and we even had a little snow at the start of December which was brilliant as we were able to go outside and explore the snow. We even brought some inside and watched what happened when the snow started to get warm.

Staff News

We would like to welcome our new staff members to the Harlequin team:

Lauren who is working in our toddler room.

Haleema who is working in our baby room.

Elise who is our modern apprentice based in the pre-school room.

Have you heard of Workplace Nursery Salary Sacrifice?

Workplace Nursery Salary Sacrifice enables working parents to save thousands of pounds while still enjoying outstanding nursery provision.

Typical savings are at least £3,000 a year!

Does your employer offer Salary Sacrifice?

The scheme works by an employer setting up a partnership with a local nursery. Employees who opt in then have guaranteed places and the costs come out in the form of a salary sacrifice, thus saving them thousands of pounds.

How It Works

The workplace nursery salary sacrifice scheme enables you to salary sacrifice the cost of your nursery fees. Enabling you to pay your fees monthly, directly from your salary before tax, via your workplace. Therefore, reducing the tax and national insurance contributions made.

The scheme also benefits the nursery as they get additional funds, these contributed by the employer (but at no cost to them as they are offset). Parents with their children at the nursery then get a say in how these extra funds are spent – it might be on learning resources, revamping outside space or for educational trips out.