Sunnyside Nursery

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Hello everyone!

As you will have noticed, it’s been some time since we posted on our page!

Facebook has been a lovely way for us to give our parents an extra insight into their child’s day to day life at nursery. However, as our current parents will know, we now use an online Learning Journey compilation site called ‘Tapestry’ which each parent has individual access to for their child. As a result of this new approach, we no longer post regularly on Facebook but, for any new/prospective parents, we hope our previous posts give you a flavour of all the fun we have learning at Sunnyside Nursery! If you have any queries, just give us a call on 610165.


How we use Tapestry at Sunnyside Nursery :-

During recent years, our Key Workers have compiled Learning Journey files for each of the children in our care to collect evidence of their learning. These files enable us to assess a child’s progress against the Early Years development stages as set out by Education, which we are required to do to access the Nursery Education Fund for our parents. The files are also invaluable to us as practitioners, as well as being treasured by parents as a keepsake of their child’s early years.

To further enhance our partnership with our parents, we decided to develop and improve the quality of our journals further by using ‘Tapestry.’ Tapestry allows our parents to access their child’s learning journey at a time suitable for them – to celebrate and cherish the special moments that occur every day here at Sunnyside Nursery. We also provide parents with a hard copy file at the end of their child’s nursery days for them to keep, as well as share with their school teacher.

Upon joining Sunnyside, parents are given individual, secure access via email address and password to their child’s Learning Journey which consists of photos, videos and learning statements. In addition to viewing our contributions, we encourage parents to add to it by uploading their own photos and comments, or by commenting on observations made by us.

For more information on ‘Tapestry,’ which is also being used successfully in other settings such as JCG Prep and St Clements primary school, you may wish to visit their website at:-
http://eyfs.info/tapestry-info/introduction

If you have any queries, please get in touch on 610165 or [email protected]

Best wishes,
The Sunnyside Team

Tapestry: The Early Years Online Learning Journal

Nursery vacancy update! We are full in Preschool for September but we will have a few spaces in our Sunflowers group (aged 2-3), when the older children move up to their next group. These are likely to go quickly so please do get in touch if this is of interest.

Sorry for the delay in updates! It's been a busy, fun start to the Summer Term. Pre-school have been continuing their work on 'Spring and new life,' looking at adult animals and their babies and learning their names eg. sheep / lamb. They had a fantastic trip to Warren Farm yesterday where they saw chickens, a Mummy pig with her very cute piglets...and a very friendly lamb and goat who, if given the chance, would have jumped in the mini bus and come back to nursery with us!

This week, continuing our topic on New Life, we have set up an incubator and eggs in preschool. The children are helping to look after them everyday and are eagerly awaiting the new arrivals!

We also visited Hamptonne recently on World Story Telling Day for a special 'Gruffalo' event run by Jersey Heritage. They went hunting for characters hidden in the woods with binoculars, made 'Gruffalo crumble' and even their own Gruffalo's made out of pine cones!

Back at nursery we've been working on our number and rhyming skills and enjoying poems. We've been celebrating World Book Day and raised £92 for Red Nose Day. We've also been making the most of the recent good weather, doing lots of activities out in the nursery gardens.

We had an Easter Fun Day recently in aid of the Grace Crocker Family Support Foundation (for which we raised £96), when the children dressed up, went Easter egg hunting and generally had a cracking time doing lots of egg-cellent activities and egg-citing games!

The children have also been enjoying taking their friendship bears home to spend the weekend with them. They've been writing down what they've done and taken lots of photos to share at circle time with their friends. The bears have had a wonderful time and thank you to all the mums and dads for taking the time to do this!

We are taking part in Melanoma Check Day on Friday 1st May, in support of the Donna Annand Melanoma Charity. Our team, as well the charity's team, will be talking to the children about the importance of sun protection and the children are invited to come to nursery wearing something checked. We will be holding a cake sale & we're very excited that Alan the Mole will be visiting us! The main aim of the day is to continue to raise the children's awareness of the importance of sun protection, whilst hopefully making a bit of money for this very special charity.

Phew! That was a big update! We've got lots more planned for the Summer Term too as our older children enjoy their last few months of nursery before their move onto big school!

More updates soon!

It's been a very chilly week but at least the cold weather fits perfectly with our current topic in Preschool! We've been learning more about the Antarctic and how Eskimos and Inuits live and we hope the children have been entertaining you at home with their poetry! They've been really enjoying learning 'The Chubby Little Snowman' poem over the last few weeks and are now moving onto a penguin poem.

We've all been hoping and hoping for snow but it seems it wasn't meant to be....we still made the most of the little sprinkling we had in our outside play areas though - making teeny tiny snow balls!

The children are continuing to enjoy their swimming lessons and have been working on doing up their buttons and zips in preparation for school.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend :)

In no time at all, our older children will be moving on to big school! Where did the time go..?! As such, we wanted to let you know that we will have a few NEF funded spaces available in our pre-school nursery class from this Summer! If this is of interest to you or anyone you know, please call 610165 or pop in anytime for more information or to have a look around; as these spaces are likely to go fast!

For those of you who don't know us, at Sunnyside, we offer the secure, homely feeling of a family run business with the cost benefits of a States Nursery. Whilst being a family-run, private nursery, Sunnyside Nursery is also part of the Nursery Education Fund (NEF) scheme which offers up to 20 hours of FREE nursery education for children in the year before school entry during term-time! Making the exceptional standard of education we offer extremely affordable!

However, there are also many added benefits of choosing Sunnyside for your child's pre-school years; such as all year round care so you do not have to make alternative arrangements for early mornings, late afternoons or during school holidays. Our team of highly trained professional staff are dedicated to giving your child a happy, fulfilling experience for an easy and smooth transition to school, with low staff/child ratios to ensure the very best care.

Offering a full educational programme, ideal for school preparation, we will ensure every child under our care has the best possible start when they reach school age.

For more info, visit our website at www.sunnysidedaynursery.com

sunnysidenursery Copy of HOME

We've had a great start to the new term here at Sunnyside!

The children have settled back into nursery really well after the Christmas break and it's lovely to have us all back together again.
We have also been welcoming our new Sunflowers group to Sunnyside who are enjoying their first few days with us.

As part of our Winter theme in Preschool, we've been learning all about ice and snow. We've been experimenting, putting water in the fridge and freezer, removing it and seeing the change of state from solid to liquid and the affect temperature has on this. We've been playing with magic snow and ice in the water tray and made snowmen and penguins for our display.

We've also been learning about penguins, polar bears and where they live. A special thank you to Robert for bringing in and sharing his HUGE toy polar bear which was a big hit!

Our cooking activities remain as popular as ever with the children. So far this term we have made oat & raisin cookies and carrot & apple muffins for snack time. Scrumptious! Well done children!

We hope you've all had a great start to the new year! More updates soon....

Well this is it - Christmas week is here!! With just 3 sleeps to go now, the excitement is definitely as it's height here at Sunnyside! We're having lots of festive fun, games and activities to pass the time.

We hope you've all enjoyed the events we've held over the past few weeks. I'm sure our Preschool parents were very proud of their little stars at their Christmas Songs performance. They really enjoyed showing parents all they had learnt about the nativity story and sang so well on the day.

We've been doing lots of festive baking and all enjoyed our Christmas lunch - turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding cooked by Felicity and Maria (.....although there were quite a few sprouts left over for some reason?!)

We had a great Christmas party and even a visit from Father Christmas...it was just magical when we heard the sleigh bells as Santa's sleigh landed on Sunnyside's roof! Thank you parents for provided such delicious party food.

So all that remains is for us to wish all our Sunnyside families a lovely Christmas, full of fun and cuddles with your children.

Best wishes,

The Sunnyside Team.

The excitement is building here at Sunnyside as we prepare for Christmas!

Our Preschool group went on an outing to choose their tree on Monday and we've been busy making salt dough decorations and stockings throughout the week. We've written our letters to Santa and been practising our Christmas songs to perform to our parents.

The Sunflowers Group went to Ransoms garden centre today to see the lights and decorations; and nursery is now looking really festive and magical!

Happy Halloween!

We've been having a great half term week getting out to the park, carving mini pumpkins and generally enjoying the amazingly beautiful weather!

Don't forget - Monday is the last day we can accept your shoe boxes for the Mustard Seed Appeal! As I'm sure you'll know, Mustard Seed is a Jersey-based charity which provides Christmas boxes as presents for children and pensioners in Romania.

Sunnyside Nursery as contributed to this effort for many years and asks you, if you have not done so already, to consider helping your child to pack a shoe box over the weekend with much needed items as on the leaflets we distributed recently. If you need another copy, please just ask. Thank you :)

Best wishes - the Sunnyside Team.

Happy Diwali!

Diwali is a five-day festival of lights, one of the most significant festivals in Indian culture. The actual day of Diwali is traditionally celebrated on the festival's third day, which this year falls today, 23rd October. The children have been learning about and celebrating Diwali and looking at lots of different sorts of lights, including fiber-optic, gas and electric.

We've been continuing to learn all about Autumn over the last few weeks by heading out on our Autumn walks to hunt for leaves and conkers; and tasting seasonal vegetables and soup. We've been finding out about which animals hibernate and which are nocturnal.

We've been getting creative as always making delicious apricot cookies, hedgehogs out of clay, as well as self portraits to round off our All About Me topic. Our music to movement sessions are a definite highlight of the week and we've been having lots of fun in our new dark den with lights and torches!

We're all excited about getting our pumpkins next week!

We've had a great start to the new term! The children have settled in really well, are making friends and getting to know to their new routine.

We've recently completed our first topic 'All About Me' which involved activities and discussion which allowed the children to get to know each other a little better. They particularly liked sharing and talking about their family photos at circle time so thank you for bringing those in.

Swimming lessons have started again and the children are really enjoying their weekly trip out in the big blue minibus (...as well as the swimming!) We still have 2 spaces available if you have not yet signed up. It really is a highlight of the week for the children and it's great to see how fast their skills develop alongside their friends.

Thank you to all the parents who kindly donated items for Harvest. These were taken down to St Luke's Church to be distributed in the community and were greatly appreciated.

We've been learning all about Autumn and the changes that are taking place in our natural environment at this time of year. We have been looking at Autumn vegetables, leaves and chestnuts and would love the children to bring in any leaves etc they find when they are out and about to share with us.

An important part of our preschool year involves encouraging the children to become independent in changing themselves and taking care of their belongings. We have been working on this during at our swimming lessons and as part of our 'Movement to Music' sessions which we have started this week.

Finally, we've been enjoying the continued lovely weather and getting outside as much as possible....whilst it lasts (not for much longer according to the forecast!) Never mind - we've got our wellies - bring on the muddy puddles!

More updates soon....