Mereside Farm Children's Nursery

Today’s post is focused on our staff team as our greatest resource will always be our staff – they work really hard every day to ensure our children have fun, learn, and feel cared for.
Early years is an incredibly rewarding, but challenging career with huge responsibilities around safety and safeguarding as well as the responsibilities we have around teaching and learning. Ultimately though it is a care profession and our main aim is to care, to comfort and to ensure our children enjoy their time with us, have fun, play, get messy and make friends!
Our team are hardworking and dedicated to doing the best for the children – they wear many different hats every day - carers, teachers, nurses, cleaners, food servers, referees, counsellors, first aiders, special needs specialists, dancer, artists and many more. They go above and beyond, sourcing ideas for activities in their own time and always step in to work extra if we need them to. A special shout out to Katie in baby room who has just hit 2 years with no absence which is a real achievement when around lots of little people who often have coughs, colds and much more.

We have staff members that have been here for 21 years and our most recent staff member has been with us for a month, but all have their own strengths that they bring to the team and all are valued.

Thankyou Mereside Team, we are proud of you!

We have had a very busy few weeks at nursery. With Tweenies exploring the outdoors on walks, checking on our growing and we even had some duck visitors come to say hello to our babies through the fence.
Our preschool children have been exploring emotions, how we feel and why we feel that way, doing a feeling mural as one of their activities. We've explored roleplay, chatting on the phone, putting our babies to sleep, serving customers tea at the beach café and making our own boarding passes for holidays!

We've been sent a great book today from the canal and river trust to help us discuss water safety with our preschool children.
The link below is from their website which gives safety tips for parents.
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/support-us/our-campaigns/safety-on-our-waterways/water-safety-tips-for-parents

This link will also take you to the book that has been sent to us, which you can view at home with your child.

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/explorers/water-safety/water-safety-for-little-explorers/little-explorers-story-book

School readiness is often a term that is used as our children get closer to school age and writing is one thing often referred to - however for us school readiness is children being able to express themselves if they need something, being able to build relationships and interact with others (for example taking turns during play) show interest in the world around them, noticing things and asking questions, understanding some boundaries and demonstrating listening skills.
Children develop from the inside out - this is 'proximodistal' development, which means from the spine outwards. There can often be an urgency to get children to use pens and pencils correctly too early, focusing on early writing skills, however all of the gross motor movements our children do through play are crucial to these latter skills.
Pivotal joints are key to developing these skills and start with the shoulders, then elbows, then wrists and finally fingers- this is why we do so many hands on activities that involve the children using these body parts.
(Credit to the curiosity approach for the final image)

Despite our ever changing weather we have been enjoying the great outdoors and all things nature at nursery, going on walks and also starting our allotment off - working hard to dig away the weeds!
We have been exploring bugs, flowers and leaves, even making our own art with objects from nature.
Our preschool children went on a bug hunt around nursery to see who they could find and our tweenies found some worms!
Our babies love the outdoors, getting physical and playing hide and seek in the house, we hope you have managed to get out and about too!

JOB VACANCY!

Come and join our amazing team and meet our fantastic children!

Get in touch - [email protected]

Looking 👀 for childcare? then contact us and arrange a viewing to look at our beautiful nursery and meet our amazing staff!!

This week the children at Mereside Farm nursery have been learning about Remembrance day and doing lots of activities around poppies.

Preschool decided to paint large poppies on the floor outside to honour our armed forces.

Next week is WORLD NURSERY RHYME WEEK!!! 🎤🎼🎵🎶

At nursery we will be revisiting some of our favourite songs with the children throughout the week and taking part in fun activities reflecting the songs.

You can join in at home to by clicking on the link where you can access videos of the 5 different songs we will be singing.

Jack and Jill 👫🪣🛌
Hickory dickory dock 🐁🕐
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes 👩‍🦲🙍‍♂️🦵🦶
Row, row, row your boat 🚣‍♀️🚣🚣‍♂️🐊🐻‍❄️🦁
The wheels on the bus 🚌

Home - World Nursery Rhyme Week World Nursery Rhyme Week is a free, world-wide initiative celebrating the importance of nursery rhymes in early childhood development.

Pumpkin fun in preschool today 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

The children enjoyed exploring the pumpkin and having a feel of all the gooey insides!!

Dear parents,
We have received a number of reports from parents who have chosen to pick their children up early today. Reports of local areas and roads being gridlocked with a number of cars stranded and affecting traffic.

Please take care on the roads but the suggestion is that you maybe give yourselves a little more time to collect their child today so we can ensure we can also get our staff safely home before the next downpour starts.

Kind regards
Helen
Nursery manager