PORTLAND HOUSE PARENT CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER 2023

As we are fast approaching the festive period I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our lovely families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year along with the very best of wishes and good health for the 2024 year ahead.

We have had a magical time during December bringing sparkle and curiosity into our daily learning and adventures with visits to the Rex cinema to see the new Disney Wish film, special visits from parents, our elderly friends from the care home and not forgetting a surprise visit from Santa who popped into to see the preschool and toddlers at their parties and brought a lovely gift for each of the children in the nursery.

We have been very fortunate to have our parents participate in our children’s learning experiences this term which continued into December. The preschool children enjoyed a visit from one of our mummies who specializes in keeping our ears healthy and brought special equipment in to demonstrate how through testing our hearing she can check they are working properly, listening to loud and quiet noise ranges. We discussed what we would need to use to help us hear if we couldn’t hear all the sounds. The visits from parents sharing in their knowledge of job roles, interests and celebrations have been a valuable enrichment to the children’s learning opportunities and allow us to continue to work together to strengthen our parent partnerships. We hope to see many more of you invited into the nursery during the upcoming months ahead.

Charity Events

The spirit of giving has ricochet throughout the nursery enabling us to come together to help the charities through a variety of events, by giving a little to help others less fortunate and spreading Christmas cheer. The selection box collection for the wellbeing Centre was highly successful and we are continuing raising funds for our nominated charity ‘ the Yorkshire Childrens Charity’ through wearing our festive jumpers this week and Christmas raffles.

The charity wreath making event that was held at Portland enabled parents across all the nurseries and relatives to try out new skills, meet new people and create some spectacular festive wreaths to don their doors at home. It would be lovely to see you at this event next year.

Room News

Babies had festive fun when parents and family members joined them for breakfast, followed by a Christmas singalong and activities such as making snowmen out of different coloured playdough and a game of guessing what’s in Santa’s sack the children took great delight in pulling out the items contained inside and naming them.

Toddlers have enjoyed exploring winter wonderland themed trays especially with the artic animals and were thrilled to have a magical visit from Santa, they were excited when parents joined them for a Stay and Play with a festive theme. They have been reading a book called 'the polar bear and the snow cloud' which is about a polar bear finding a friend to play with. On each page it had a different snow animal, the children took turns to find the animals in our snow sensory tray from the story. There was an owl, seal, deer, whale, fish and the polar bears. They spent a long period of time playing with the snow in the tray feeling it in their hands and sprinkling all around over the animals like in the story. It did get a bit messy!

Preschool have enjoyed parents and family coming to their little fundraising soiree singing Christmas carols and also serenading our elderly friends from the care home whom along with children from all rooms joined us for a festive singalong on Monday 18^th December. They are looking forward to visiting the care home on Friday 22^nd December where they have been invited for a little end of year celebration.

As we enjoy the last few nursery days of 2023 we look forward to seeing you joining in with adventures in the year ahead with many exciting events in the planning. Please add your wishes for 2024 in the little wishing well in the main entrance and we will see what we can do to make as many of them come true.

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.

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.