AUTUMN 2024 NEWSLETTER

Wow! How did summer end so quickly this year.  Or rather, did we actually have a summer?  Although the weather wasn’t great, we had a brilliant 6 weeks with the children doing all sorts of wonderful things like visits to Chobham Adventure Farm, walks along the canal, Little Street, Bockets Farm, rock painting, paddling pool fun, bouncy castles and assault courses in the garden, visits to the library and charity shop, walk around the lake with yummy ice creams, toddler groups and so much more.  One of our lovely dads got us free tickets to Hobbledown Heath which was also a lovely new experience for us.

We had a great (and very busy) FUN DAY on Sunday 11 August with most of our families coming for bouncy castle and BBQ fun and to get to know each other and chat.  Some lovely connections were made, and we also had some past children and families visit which was so lovely (although did make me feel a bit old!). 

Schools went back this week on 2nd September 2024 and everyone seemed very excited, and a little nervous.  They all had a lovely week at ours telling their friends all about their new teachers and classrooms.

For children under 5; Lauren and I will continue to follow the Early Years Foundation Stage; which was reviewed (again) and became effective in January 2024.  There are now two documents, one for childminders and one for schools so that we can concentrate on our own type of setting.  Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Our topic for the Autumn term is Water and we will find out lots of interesting things about different types of water such as rivers, lakes, rain, puddles, the sea, snow, ice, frost, dew etc.  If you have any pictures sitting on the beach or splashing in a paddling pool, rowing a boat on a river or anything fun to do with water; we would love to see and share them with the children here so please do send them in.  We will also look at other celebrations from around the world such as Diwali, St Andrews Day, road safety week, Halloween, kindness day, bonfire night, sign language day, space week and of course Christmas.

We will continue to support two of our current charities this year.  We send money for two dogs at the Dogs Trust, (Boris on the left and Cheeky on the right).  We get pictures and letters from them each term so if anyone would like to have a look please just ask. 

We will also continue to support children who can’t hear very well through a charity called The National Deaf Children Society.  They give support on childhood deafness, raise awareness and campaign for deaf children’s rights.  We decided to support this charity because one of our mums (and subsequently her son) has some loss of hearing.  They also send a quarterly magazine which is available for anyone to read.

We have been reviewing our house rules with the children over the summer and first week of term and have decided these are good ones to have:

Be kind to one another

Share our toys and games

Look after our toys and tell Ilana or Lauren if something is broken

Sit on the sofa and run in the garden

Use nice words when speaking to each other

Eat together at the table and help each other by passing things when needed

Be safe at home and when we are out

Tidy toys away when we are finished playing with them

Love our animals and look after them nicely

No running downstairs, just walk

The children also put together a lovely house rules poster which says:-

No running

Be quiet as a bee

No mess

No making people sad

No messing up your homework

No cactuses

And this is exactly why we love working with children, they make us laugh every day and teach us what is important in life (beware of cactuses!).