Kings Road Nursery School

Lots of exciting things have been happening outdoors at Nursery this week….

You may have heard that we acquired an extra piece of outdoor space at the end of last school year, which we plan to use as a site for our forest school sessions and lots of other exciting events. This magical space is now called ‘The Spinney’, meaning ‘a small area of trees and bushes’. 🌳🐿️

We are working away at developing the Spinney, and this week saw the delivery of a brand new polytunnel - thanks to Wayne and his team from Polytunnelsni who supplied and installed it on Tuesday.

We hope to grow herbs and vegetables in our new tunnel, as well as using it as a space to shelter and stay dry when the rain gets a bit too much!

We are also extremely fortunate to have Brigid’s parents, the owners of Sow Grateful helping us out with the space, providing super advice and helping us develop it.

If any other parents or carers would like to lend a hand in our Spinney, we would be delighted to have you…. many hands make light work! Get in touch if you are able to help. 🧤🪴

We have had a bank card handed into Nursery that was found outside the gate.
The initials of the cardholder are TR
Get in touch if this is you

The boys and girls have been practising their early woodwork skills by hammering these golf tees into pumpkins.
Such careful work, and great following instructions! 🎃

What a great Harvest collection for Dundonald Foodbank !

Thanks to all our families for their generous donations 🥰

Donations have started to come in for our Harvest Collection for Dundonald Foodbank .
If any parents would like to donate and are not sure what to bring, please have a look at the list for inspiration.
Thank you ☺️

We love being outdoors….whatever the weather! 🌧️

Wow!! What an afternoon! our bake sale was a huge success…..thanks to all our parents and carers for contributing such amazing treats 🍪🍰🧁 Thanks so much to everyone who supported the sale, we hope you all enjoy your goodies!

What a lovely way to end a busy, sunny week at nursery. Have a lovely weekend everyone! 😎

It’s our Summer cake sale tomorrow from around 1.15pm. Everyone very welcome to come along and buy some Friday treats….family members, new families who haven’t started with us yet, friends and neighbours. Come along! 🧁

We are so excited for our Summer cake sale! 🍰🍩🍋

Come along next Friday 16th June, from 1.15pm to buy some yummy treats or a cold lemonade, outside the nursery. ☀️

We have been made aware that our email provider is down. If you are trying to email the school, your message may bounce back. We will update you on here when email is working again

Rosie May made a ‘nest of chicks’ this morning - isn’t it lovely?! 🐥

What a great morning! 😊

Huge thanks to the parents, carers and staff who came along and helped at our garden day this morning.

The planters, garden furniture and plants from The Secret Garden at Dundonald Nurseries look fantastic and it’s great to see some colour in our nursery garden. 🌱🌸

Everyone worked so hard and we got lots done. The rain stayed away (mostly), the sausage baps went down a treat and we all agreed it was a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning!

Thanks again everyone 💙💛

The children have some lovely Easter activities waiting for them next week. 🐥🥚🐰

Parents/Carers

Please ensure you check Seesaw for urgent message about closure today

The staff team spent their Saturday attending the FONT conference with guest speaker James Tunnell - NurseryNook Coaching, Training & Consultancy . James gave us a super inspiring and engaging morning, and we all left buzzing with ideas on how to develop and enhance the provision in our Nursery! 😊

❗️Important info re nursery applications for 2023/2024❗️

Thank you to all parents that have submitted their applications:

Please remember to upload all required documents to verify your application on the EA document hub by 4pm on Tuesday 31st January.

HUGE thanks to Corey’s Daddy and Harriet’s Daddy who gave up their Saturday morning to work in the cold, and do some jobs to help us with the Nursery outdoor area.
Our Kings Road Community really is the best! 💙💛

We were absolutely thrilled to have a visit from Liam from JP Corry today with a very exciting delivery 😃
The company have kindly donated lots of brilliant resources for our outdoor area, so we can create our own ‘construction yard’. We are so excited to see how our aspiring builders, engineers and architects put these items to use!

Thanks to Mrs Fuller for organising and thanks again to the team at JP Corry for these fantastic resources.

👷‍♀️👷🏽‍♂️

On Wednesday 7th December we will be having our annual open afternoon, from 2.15 - 4.15pm. Staff will be there to show you round and answer any questions you might have. Children are very welcome to attend😊
So if your child is due to start nursery next September, come along and have a look at our lovely school- we look forward to meeting you!

The children have been using loose parts to create self portraits - a different way to get creative and make a picture!

We were delighted to host the Education Minister and colleagues from the Department of Education this morning. It was a great opportunity to show off our fantastic Nursery School and discuss our future plans. 🌲🌳

We have a few families not signed up to our seesaw app yet. Please do connect to your child’s journal as soon as you can, that way you won’t miss any messages or information.
Let us know if you’re having a problem getting on the app and we will try and help 😊

It was so lovely to see the happy faces enjoying their first visit to nursery this morning! We are really looking forward to the rest of our family visits next week.
Another year, another adventure! ✨

😎School’s out for Summer!😎

Another year over and it’s hard to believe! Thanks to all the parents and carers for their kind gifts and words, and their support throughout the year.
It’s been a pleasure to watch the children progress and grow this year- we are so proud of them all! ☺️
Have a wonderful Summer and all the best for P1.

We are happy to announce that we have been awarded an Autism NI Impact Award for Nursery Schools! 🌟
The staff have worked hard to improve and develop our learning environment, ensuring it’s even more inclusive and supportive to autistic children. We are delighted to achieve this award!

Our first Elmer selfie!!! Well done Kamila….you found him! 👏

Doesn’t our Elmer look fantastic?! 😊

Have you ‘herd’ the news?!?! 🐘🌈

Kings Road Nursery School are delighted to be a part of Elmers Big Belfast Trail to raise funds for Northern Ireland Hospice as part of Elmer's Big Belfast Trail

The nursery received a sculpture of Elmer the Elephant to decorate - there was great discussion among the children as to how it should look but they settled on a ‘minibeast’ theme. The children worked hard painting and decorating our Elmer, and they were delighted with the end result 💚🐞🪲🪱

Our finished sculpture is now displayed for all to see in Donegal Arcade and we are super proud to show it off!

Lots of us are heading into town this weekend to visit our Kings Road Elmer….there are lots of other brilliant sculptures to spot too, so be sure to check it out😊

We made our own ‘moon sand’ in nursery this morning- a mix of flour and baby oil. It’s soft and fluffy but can be moulded into shapes easily too. The children loved it and were very busy making sandcastles all morning!!🏖

The yellow room children had their last forest school session today. They were delighted with a fabulous forest school medal to mark all their achievements this year! 🌳🏅

We were delighted to welcome Danielle from NIFSA along to Kings Road yesterday to observe a lesson, part of the forest school level 3 leader qualification being undertaken by two members of staff.
We are so lucky to be able to run these sessions in our own school grounds ☺️🌲🌳🌲🌳

Today Yellow Room have been hunting for bugs in Forest School 🐞🐜🦟🕷🪲🐌 The children found lots of interesting minibeasts and there was great discussion. We warmed ourselves up around the campfire with some sausages for our snack, yummy!

Our new mud kitchen has been a huge hit! Thanks to MessyPlay NI for their great service 😊

We asked our parents for donations of flowers this week, just in time to get all those mothers day flowers that were heading to the bin! 💐
We used these flowers to create some ‘Hapa Zome‘ art during forest school - this is a Japanese artform, where plants and petals are hammered to create beautiful patterns on fabric.
The children used big stones to bash and bang the flowers under their cloth and they loved making all that noise!
Great work everyone 🌟

Yellow Room children worked hard in forest school today. They did some spring cleaning of our mud kitchen and planted some potatoes 🥔🥔 Great work everyone!

We had a fantastic Spring themed show from Mr Hullabaloo today! What a treat for a Monday morning- the children had a great time 😊

We had a super visit from Liz Weir - Irish Storyteller this morning. The children listened beautifully and loved all Liz’s stories and rhymes. Thank you Liz, we had a great morning with you!! ☺️

PRE-SCHOOL AND PRIMARY ADMISSIONS REMINDER

For parents/ guardians who have applied for a place in pre-school or primary for September 2022, if you have not already uploaded your child’s birth certificate or any required supporting documents, it is important that you do this before 12 noon on Friday 4 February 2022.

You should have received an email reminder. If you have queries regarding types of documents required please read the published admissions criteria of the pre-schools/schools listed on your application or contact them directly if needed.

To find the published admissions criteria visit www.eani.org.uk/admissions

We had another brilliant session with Coach Paul from Sonal Sportz NI today. The children had so much fun working on their balance, exploring different ways of moving and, of course, developing their ball skills. These sessions are just fantastic and we are already looking forward to next week! 😀⚽️

We are absolutely thrilled with our new outdoor teepee - can’t wait to see the children’s faces on Monday morning!
A HUGE thank you to Julia’s dad and Ted’s dad who gave up their time to assemble it for us today- we really appreciate it. ☺️

Next week we will be learning all about Chinese New Year 🧧🏮🐯 We have lots of fun activies to enjoy with the children.
🎇Gong Hei Fat Choy! 🎇