Nursery Times

Children are allocated with a morning or afternoon place in Nursery. The sessions last for 3 hours each, totalling 15 hours per week.

Morning Session 8:35am – 11:35am

Afternoon Session 12:30pm – 3:30pm

Nursery Information

In Nursery, your child will learn through topic-based activities and initiate their own learning through play. We also encourage children to be as independent as possible and follow their interests.
The curriculum we follow is the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’. This is the curriculum guidance for children in childcare provision, playgroups, nurseries and reception classes. It aims to provide children with rich, play-based learning that enhances communication and widens their experiences. It provides teachers and practitioners with age-related expectations and targets for seven different areas of learning. These are:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

Your child will be assessed against each of these areas on a termly basis throughout the year. If at any point your child needs extra support to achieve their best, we will provide target-based intervention and support work. We will also work with a variety of professionals such as Speech and Language Therapists, to support children more formally when needed. Please speak to us as soon as possible if you are concerned about any aspect of your child’s development. The sooner it is addressed, the sooner your child can receive help.

Please find more information by clicking here.

Dropping Off & Collecting from Nursery

It is important that your child is brought to nursery on time to ensure they do not miss out or interrupt the learning of other children. For this reason, as well as the safeguarding implications, children who are more than ten minutes late will not be admitted. If you are less than ten minutes late bringing your child to nursery and the nursery door has closed please take your child to the school office where you will need to sign them in.

Children must be collected promptly at the end of each session. If you are going to be late, please telephone the school office immediately so that we can reassure your child on 01902 308870.

For safeguarding purposes, on your nursery admission form, you must list the names and contact numbers of all the people who are permitted to collect your child. Your child will not be sent home with anyone who is not on this list unless you have informed us beforehand. If in doubt, we will always contact you before allowing your child to leave with someone unfamiliar. All children must be brought to Nursery and collected by a responsible person aged 16 or over.

The safeguarding of your child is paramount to us, particularly at the start and end of nursery when the main doors are open. Please feel free to pass on any quick messages, but if you need to speak to the Nursery teacher, please arrange a suitable time after your child’s session to do so.

Cloakroom, Bag & Spare Underwear

Your child will have a peg in the cloakroom with their name next to it. Please encourage your child to take off and hang up their belongings independently. It is important that they are able to do these things on their own as soon as possible. They also need to know where their peg is so that they can find it and get their coat for outside play/activities.

Your child will require a bag for Nursery. This should be a small bag for their spare underwear and wellies. Please do not put unnecessary items in your child’s bag. Some children may have to share pegs as we have limited space and it can create problems when your child is looking for their belongings if they have lots of items to search through. This bag needs to stay in nursery all year round, with the exception of holidays.

Toileting and Accidents

If your child does have an accident, staff will help them to get clean and changed, as long as you have signed your permission for intimate care on your child’s nursery admission form. If we do not have this signed consent, we will contact you in order for you to come to nursery to clean and change your child.

If your child is still in nappies/pull-ups, please make the Nursery teacher aware as soon as possible. It is advisable to ensure that your child is dry in the daytime when they start nursery, if you require assistance with this you can contact your child’s Health Visitor. Parents must provide their child’s own nappies/pull-ups.

Nursery Uniform

• Light Blue Polo Shirt
• St Mary’s Navy Sweatshirt
• St Mary’s Navy tracksuit bottoms
• Black trainers or PE Pumps
• Wellies
• Raincoat

Your child will need wellies and a raincoat for our ‘Welly Wednesday’ sessions. This is our day where children will take part in activities outside on the field, garden and playground. Please leave your child’s wellies and raincoat in nursery for them to change into. If you wish to dress your child in an all-in-one suit for Welly Wednesday you can, this is ideal for our outdoor sessions and ensures that we can access the outdoor classroom whatever the weather!

We do our best to keep children’s clothing clean and tidy (they wear aprons for messy activities) but please remember that due to their age and style of Early Years teaching, they can, and will, get messy!

Please ensure all of your child’s belongings are clearly labelled with their FULL name. This includes spare clothing, shoes and wellies.

We cannot accept responsibility for lost items.

Appearance

In line with Academy Policy on appearance, unusual hairstyles, colours, shaved lines and patterns in hair are not permitted in nursery.  Long hair should be tied up and no hair products such as gel, hairspray etc. should be used.  Please see the Academy Prospectus on our website www.stmaryscpa.co.uk for guidance.

No jewellery should be worn to Nursery.

Jewellery can cause serious accidents in nursery and we will not take responsibility for any items that are lost or broken. If your child has pierced ears, they can wear simple gold or silver studs only. However, these must be removed for P.E. and Welly Wednesday.

Medication & Allergies

If your child has any medical conditions, please inform the teacher as soon as possible and ensure that you write it on their nursery admission form. We also need to know if they need to take any medication. For conditions such as asthma, please ask your G.P for a duplicate inhaler. Children with asthma MUST have an inhaler left in nursery that they can access whenever needed. Staff members are not allowed to administer any non-prescribed medications, i.e. over the counter pain relief (e.g. Calpol).

Attendance & Welfare Information

Attendance is very important. We usually have a long waiting list for nursery, so once you have accepted a place, it is expected that your child will attend every session and that you will adhere to the following Attendance and Welfare Information:

• I agree that I will inform the school of any changes in social or domestic circumstances that may affect my child’s attendance.
• I agree to inform the school on the first day of illness that prevents my child from attending nursery and to ensure that I keep in regular contact throughout any prolonged illness
• I understand that poor attendance and punctuality has a detrimental effect to my child’s learning.

If your child has a case of sickness or diarrhoea, they must be kept at home for a minimum of 48 hours from their last bout. This is extremely important to prevent the spread of illness and germs to other children. Your child will not be admitted before this 48 hour period has passed.

Parental Involvement

We encourage parents to have an active role in their child’s learning and development. We greatly appreciate your support and, in turn, it helps to promote your child’s progress. We will invite parents/grandparents to attend regular stay and play sessions and to become involved by completing learning activities that are sent home weekly.

Educational Visits

Once a year we usually organise a trip for the nursery children. We ask parents for a voluntary contribution towards the entrance fee and coach costs. St Mary’s is a cashless school and we use a system called ParentPay to collect these contributions. You will be issued with an activation code to log onto the ParentPay website and set up your account; you can then add the trip to your ‘basket’ and ‘checkout’ as with other online shopping websites. If you would rather pay for the trip in cash, the office can issue a unique barcode to you which you can then take to any PayPoint store for them to scan and credit your child’s account when you pay your child’s contribution.

The only cash we accept in school is for fundraising activities, for example we sometimes have non-uniform days with a suggested contribution of £1, this is paid in cash as it goes towards our School Fund.

Other Information

We feel that communication between home and nursery is very important and we communicate with parents in a variety of ways. Letters are sent home and copies uploaded to the school website (click on the Parents/Carers tab then on Letters for Parents/Carers). A monthly school newsletter is sent home and there is a section dedicated to Nursery. We have a Facebook page @stmaryscpa where we post regular updates on what is happening in school and nursery. We also use text messaging to communicate with parents. Please ensure you provide us with up to date contact details and advise us of any changes immediately.

Important letters, diary dates and events will also be displayed in the cloakroom. Please read them carefully to make sure you don’t miss out on anything. If your child is absent, always ask a member of staff if you have missed anything but please note that you are responsible for checking missed information due to absences.

Please view our Admissions Policy below:

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