HOLLY BANK PARENT CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER 2023

What a wonderful year 2023 has been. In addition to welcoming many new Children, we also had to bid farewell to some. In particular, we still miss all of our August school leavers. Even though some of our staff members have departed, we still have a fantastic team that the Children have all become very attached to. We have welcomed new staff members who have settled really well as part of the Hollybank team.

We have been busy celebrating this festive month at Hollybank, with visits to the Rex theatre to see the newest Disney Wish film, special visits from parents , our Christmas breakfast for the babies, and a surprise visit from Santa who stopped by to see the preschool and toddlers at their parties and brought a little gift for each child in the nursery, we have had a magical time during December, adding sparkle and curiosity into our daily learning and adventures.

Since the holiday season is quickly approaching, I'd want to take this chance to wish each and every one of our beautiful families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Room News

Babies

Christmas in the baby room at Holly Bank, we have been busy taking part in lots of different activities. We have used Christmas cutter in paint to create stamping pictures and also used them in the Christmas playdough that we have made where we explored different scents such as cinnamon and ginger. We had fun developing our hand eye coordination in the water tray, we scooped up baubles and jingle bells using different sized scoops. And outdoors we made it snow by blowing all the frothy bubbles into the air.

Toddlers

The toddlers have been getting into the festive spirit by helping to decorate our Christmas tree. We worked in pairs to choose baubles and add them on, it looks beautiful! We have had lots of fun hunting for elves in the sand tray, using tweezers to pick up and sort baubles and of course we have been doing lots of Christmas crafts. We added cinnamon sticks and real Christmas tree pieces to our playdough before turning them into festive snowmen!

Preschool

Preschool have been very excited about the impending festivities. We have investigated the different sizes and shapes of baubles. We have balanced them on to wooden tubes, buried them in sand and rescued them from the water.

We enjoyed a wonderful carol concert with lots of parents in attendance and even had a visit from Santa!

As we enjoy the final few days of 2023 as a nursery, we hope to see you joining us on adventures in the upcoming year, which is sure to be filled with many exciting events.

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.

Christmas dates and Closures

The nursery will be closed on Monday 25^th December 2023 and will reopen on Tuesday 2^nd January 2024.

For children who attend term time the sessions will resume week commencing Monday 8^th January 2024.