Mulberry Bush Nursery Group

SCHEMATIC PLAY

Continuing our focus on schemas, we posted last month about why your child constantly throws things across the room or drop food from their highchair? Why do they constantly move toys from one place to another?

As children learn to make sense of the world around them, children have a very strong drive to repeat actions, they respond to repetitive urges. They move things from one place to another, cover things up, put things into containers, move in circles and throw things. All of these things are types of schematic play – otherwise known as schematic learning styles – schemas. ❤️

There are six ‘Schemas’ particularly relevant to early years and we will introduce you to all of them over the next few months, we previously posted about the ‘Trajectory schema’ and today we are looking at the 'Transporting schema'.

TRANSPORTING SCHEMA

You will all be familiar with finding children’s pockets full of little things that they have picked up to take with them, to move around. This urge/fascination to carrying items from one place to another is a ‘Transporting schema’.

When they exhibit this urge, the children are developing their understanding of how distance works. They are learning about where things belong, and how objects have a place that works best for them. They are developing an understanding of journeys, and mapping.

We see transporting scheme in children’s play when they:-

- fill objects such as buckets or containers, and take them somewhere else
- fill their pockets with objects to take to another part of a room
- enjoy moving objects with trolleys and prams
- enjoy moving water, sand, mud, or other malleable materials

When transporting children learn:-

⭐️how to move things - what might help me move this if I can’t move it myself? How should I hold this? What if I have many objects to move?
⭐️their own strength - what can I lift?
⭐️creativity - where could I put this?
⭐️searching and finding - where is that?

We make sure that we support ‘Transporting Schemas’ at nursery by allowing children to move things around a space safely. Providing lots of ways of moving equipment, such as trolleys and buckets really helps them. Children will become intent on moving objects from place to place, the objects may be carried in their hands, pockets or through filling containers such as buckets, trolleys, wheelbarrows and bags, these collected objects are then placed in piles around the nursery. We have lots of transporters in nursery who like to fill up bags and transport things from place to place.

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

📸 Our photographer Andy popped into Walmersley this morning and captured all the educational and entertaining activities in every room!

DUMERS LANE NURSERY

🍂 Autumn vibes and plenty of exploring today

CHILDREN IN NEED

HUNT OUT YOUR FANCY DRESS! 🦸‍♂️🧚‍♂️🦖

It is Children in Need on Friday 17th November - always a popular day at nursery!

All our children are invited to come into nursery in fancy dress (whatever you already have!) and help us raise money for Children in Need. We will have collection buckets ready for your donations - any amount gratefully received.

Thank you! 💙💕

WALSHAW NURSERY

Our younger Kindergarten children had a lovely visit from Sara Bloom Bolton South and Bury

They enjoyed sleepover week and explored the cuddly teddies and blankets! 🧸 🛌 🩵🩷

PRIMARY SCHOOL APPLICATIONS

Bury LA's School Admissions Team have asked us to share information with our parents about primary school applications for September 2024.

If your child is due to start Primary School next year, (i.e. is born between 1/9/19 and 31/8/20) Bury LA have written to you with details of the process.

The online application process is now open for applying for Reception places and the closing date is 15 Jan 2024. All details are contained in the letter which we have uploaded to MySchoolApp if you haven't received a copy direct.

How do we have so many long-standing team members?

We are so proud to have so many long standing team members as part of our Mulberry Bush family. By way of illustration, across our management team of 16 managers, we have a combined experience of 237 years of childcare experience and 178 years of working at Mulberry Bush together. When we were recently inspected at our Whitefield nursery, we calculated that the small team based there alone has over 178 years of childcare experience and 155 years of service with Mulberry Bush between them!

We celebrate long service, we have a system of silver and gold badges for 5 and 10 year experience, and those occasions are a great opportunity for a gift and a chat, we have team members who have celebrated 15 and 20 years’ service with us, and they are very special too. One team member, Orly at Whitefield, has worked for Mulberry Bush for over 33 years!

There are lots of reasons that we feel that we have so many long standing team members – we work incredibly hard to provide a positive and supportive working environment, we pay our team well and have an extensive range of team benefits, designed in conjunction with our entire team. We offer constant continuing professional development and training opportunities, and importantly with five nurseries all local to Bury, we are able to provide real career opportunities and progression. We promote senior team members from within, home grown talent works best and we are very proud of the progression of our team.

We are very lucky to have our amazing team and we do our best to make sure that we appreciate them. We have a supportive six month induction process, an inspired mentor programme, we carry out peer observations, we offer flexible working arrangements, childcare discounts, mental health and wellbeing day for all team members, bonuses for commitment and attendance and the ability to use accrued time against absence. Our benefits package was designed in consultation with our team and we feel it sets us apart.

2 YEAR FUNDED PLACES AVAILABLE AT OUR NURSERIES 💙💕

We have availability at our Dumers Lane, Tottington, Walmersley and Walshaw Nurseries for 2 year funded places.

Your 2-year-old may be eligible for 15 hours of funded childcare.

To apply visit www.bury.gov.uk/eec or scan the QR code on our photo below!

For more information contact

📧 email [email protected]
📞 call early years funding team on 0161 253 7665

To discuss availability and book a viewing of one of our nurseries, contact that nursery direct:

📞Dumers Lane Nursery - 0161 672 3338
📧 [email protected]
👩🏼‍💼 Shouna/Gemma/Gemma

📞Tottington Nursery - 01204 885656
📧[email protected]
👩🏼‍💼 Stacie/Sam

📞Walmersley Nursery - 0161 761 0150
📧[email protected]
👩🏼‍💼 Sarah/Lucy/Kelly

📞Walshaw Nursery - 0161 797 3788
📧[email protected]
👩🏼‍💼 Amy/Gemma/Laura

SEND Parent and Carers

Children’s Health Services for SEND are holding a Parent Carer Engagement Session at the East Ward Family Hub on the 29th November 2023 at 10.30am until 12.00pm to highlight the progress within Children’s Health Services over this past year- “You said…we are doing”.

Parent Carers will have an opportunity to say what works for them and what could be better.

WALSHAW NURSERY

Our Pre-school children loved their 'Mindful sound' session outdoors today! They explored the rustling of the leaves 🍁, listened to the wind and even heard some builders using their tools ⚒️

WALSHAW NURSERY

Halloween fun yesterday 🎃

TOTTINGTON NURSERY

We have been enjoying the Autumn sunshine this morning and listening to the crunch of the leaves under our shoes. 🍂

PRIMARY SCHOOL OPEN DAYS

Information below about St.Mary's Primary School in Hawkshaw open afternoon/evening 🌟

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

Happy Halloween!! The children had fun being spooky and doing spooktacular activities! 🎃

TOTTINGTON NURSERY

🎃 Halloween fun in Kindergarten with a visit from Bloom Baby. We had fun singing and dancing with our friends.

Bloom Bolton South and Bury

Care and Convo - November 2023

WHITEFIELD NURSERY

🎃 Halloween fun 👻

What's on at the Bury SEND Hub in November

Why do we have five nurseries in one town?

Our first nursery was established in Tottington in 1990, and in the last 23 years we have grown to a small group of five nurseries, all in one town.

During that time we could obviously have expanded further, further afield and in size. However - our approach to running our nurseries is to be very involved at every level of their operation, to ensure the very high standards that we insist upon.

The directors and owners of Mulberry Bush are siblings Jo, Paul and Andy. They all live locally and are active members of the Bury community. They all carry out different roles in nursery and remain heavily involved on a daily basis. We feel this is an important part of our success and ability to maintain quality, and would not want to dilute that involvement.

There are huge advantages to our five nurseries being located so close together – we have a ‘one team’ ethos, really feeling like Team MB across five nurseries. Many of our team members and most of our managers and senior team have worked in more than one of our nurseries, plenty have worked in all five. They provide career progression, helping us to retain our team. They are able to support each other, tying into the fact that we have never had to use agency staff in our nurseries.

We don’t have plans to venture any further afield, we are privileged to provide childcare for up to 1000 children in Bury at any one time.

WALSHAW NURSERY

We’ve all had so much fun today! 🎃

TOTTINGTON NURSERY

📸 Our photographer Andy popped into Tottington this morning to snap the spooktacular goings on! 👻

It was a hive of Halloween activities in every room! 🎃

🌟 JOB OPPORTUNITY 🌟

FLOATING NURSERY CHEF VACANCY – Bury, Lancs

We are looking for a nursery chef to join our fantastic team.

Sociable chef hours - 7.30am to 4.00pm, Monday to Friday.

Mulberry Bush Nursery Group is an Outstanding provider of childcare with nurseries in Tottington, Walshaw, Whitefield, Walmersley and Dumers Lane.

We are currently looking for a committed and enthusiastic nursery cook to help at all 5 of our nursery sites on a floating basis.

You will be responsible for ensuring that children have a nutritious balanced menu throughout the day and for managing individual children's dietary requirements. You will be required to prepare meals for between 56 and 122 children, effectively and on time on a daily basis.

Knowledge of health and safety legislation, food hygiene and safe cleaning practices are essential. Ideally you will have experience in a nursery, school or care home kitchen.

Successful applicants are required to undertake an enhanced disclosure and barring service check.

Please email Sharon at [email protected], call 0161 761 0169 or message us through Facebook.

WALSHAW NURSERY

Our Toddler children loved making magic potions in their special cauldrons! 🪄

DUMERS LANE NURSERY

Toddler 2 had a spooktacular morning today, from painting and decorating pumpkins to making witches potions 🎃🧙‍♀️🧹

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

The children in Pre-school have been enjoying some spooky activities 👻, making potions 🧪 and using tweezers to try and help the bugs 🐛 escape from the slime.

They have loved working together and getting messy!

SCHEMATIC PLAY

Why does your child constantly throw things across the room or drop food from their highchair? Why do they constantly move toys from one place to another?

As children learn to make sense of the* world around them, children have a very strong drive to repeat actions, they respond to repetitive urges. They move things from one place to another, cover things up, put things into containers, move in circles and throw things. All of these things are types of schematic play – otherwise known as schematic learning styles – schemas. ❤️

There are six ‘Schemas’ particularly relevant to early years and we will introduce you to all of them over the next few months, starting here with the ‘Trajectory schema’.

TRAJECTORY SCHEMA

Some children love to explore objects and their surrounding through movement, horizontally (throwing or running) or vertically (dropping). It’s all about the movement - either themselves or an object, it’s called a ‘Trajectory Schema’. ❤️

The trajectory schema is one of the earliest schemas observed in children. They are fascinated with how they, and objects move. We can’t and shouldn’t resist these urges, in fact we need to provide opportunities for children to exhibit them. They help children learn through early scientific exploration, speed, distance, trajection, how far will it travel, where will it land? How will it land ? What noise will it make when it hits the floor? It’s all valuable learning. ❤️

As adults it’s important we learn to understand behaviours and facilitate them safely, instead trying to ‘manage’ them (i.e. stop the running or the throwing). We need to understand brain development and the schematic styles of children. This will enable us to support and facilitate play and learning.

If we have children who love to throw, drop or roll things, we make sure that we provide opportunities for this in their environment & play experiences. We are then able to meet children’s individual needs and providing a powerful rich learning environment set up ready for them to explore & investigate.

If we provide those spaces, places, objects and things they can safely throw, launch or hurl, then they are less likely to have the urge to seek opportunities that are deemed inappropriate. Examples of the types of activities we make sure that we provide in nursery are:

🔹roll balls, sand, water down tubing
🔹pushing vehicles along a track
🔹riding scooters or bikes
🔹kicking, throwing balls
🔹throwing Paper Aeroplanes
🔹throwing beans bags
🔹splat painting
🔹playing Skittles, tin cans
🔹knocking down towers
🔹bats and ball games
🔹dripping glue
🔹pouring water
🔹watching dominoes topple
🔹wet sponge throwing
🔹dribbling gloop

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

Kindergarten have enjoyed an afternoon of sensory play and messy dinosaur fun! 🦕

They have been exploring their magical dinosaur kingdom through touch, sight and smell 🌸🦖🩷💙

When you’re stocking up on treats this Halloween please remember that some sweets can be dangerous for little ones.

Lollipops, hard candy and mini eggs in particular can pose a serious choking risk. So please pick another treat.

For more top tips on how to this Halloween visit: https://capt.org.uk/halloween/

OUR MINDFULNESS PROGRAMME

Our Mindfulness Programme will start in our Pre-school units from next week for 8 weeks.

Our Mindfulness Programme was designed by our senior team whilst working closely with Aislinn from The Calm Within. The Calm Within

It introduces our children to the calming benefits of focusing their minds.

We are excited to provide a variety of activities and resources that will encourage children to learn to pause and notice how they are feeling, accept and understand why they are experiencing those feelings.

The Pre-school Mindfulness Programme will each week focus on an aspect; sound, touch, breathing, eating, sight, smell, movement and creation.

Children can take part in mindfulness activities throughout the day and spontaneous ‘mindful moments’.

💙💕

🎃 Halloween 🎃

Some of our team will be dressing up (nothing too scary!) on Tuesday 31st October if your children would like to join in.

If they don't attend nursery on a Tuesday, feel free to send them in dressing up outfits across the week 🧡

Thank you from Team MB

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

Toddlers have been enjoying fun activities this morning!

Playdoh, shapes, diggers, jigsaws and more 🩷💙

Why don’t we take our children on outings?

We took the decision many years ago that we wouldn’t take our children outside of nursery on trips. We do not feel that the the additional risk that outings represent was a risk we wanted to take. The Early Years Foundation Stage states that early years providers simply need to maintain minimum ratios for outings, as is the case within nursery. This means that a nursery may legally take a group of sixteen two-year-olds on an outing with just four adults. If we were to take our children out of our carefully risk assessed environment, we would want our children on a 1:1 ratio to ensure their safety which is simply not feasible.

We know this decision about outings sets us apart from a lot of other nurseries, and it is often one of the reasons that parents choose our nurseries.

We ensure that our children’s experiences at nursery are wide and varied. We welcome in as many visitors as possible - ranging from our monthly French teacher from Lingotots providing fun and interactive French lessons that support our French programme, and mindfulness guru Aislinn from The Calm Within and yoga sessions, to people who help us like the police, the fire brigade and paramedics, vets and doctors, to theatrical visitors like Wacky Woody with his dental hygiene show and Tom Cliff’s school of dance.
We use all of our existing resources to broaden children’s experiences, ensuring that they feel sand between their toes, listen to classical music at sleep time and get to taste foods from around the world in our tasting session.

We are comfortable with our decision on outings and our parents are happy with it too.

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

Pre-school enjoyed a special visit from Wacky Woody.

There has been singing, laughter and learning about the importance of keeping our teeth nice and clean! 🦷🪥

🎶 Brush your teeth twice a day! 🎶🩷💙

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

The Baby Room have enjoyed sensory time today using the foil blanket and colourful scarfs ✨

WHITEFIELD NURSERY

This afternoon, Sarah from Bloom Bolton South and Bury came to visit our Kindergarten children.

We had fun exploring the autumnal 🍁 animals and props and singing songs 🎶

The best part was watching the stars ⭐️ under the parachute 🪂 and catching bubbles 🫧

WALMERSLEY NURSERY

Toddlers have been exploring a woodland-themed malleable tray with pine cones, logs and Play-Dough 🌲 🍃 🦔

PRIMARY SCHOOL OPEN DAYS

Information below about Ribble Drive Community Primary School open day 🌟

PRIMARY SCHOOL OPEN DAYS

Details of open days at Sunny Bank Primary School 🩷💙