I hope that you have all had a super summer holiday and that you are all looking forward to an exciting new academic year.
The end of the summer term was as emotional as ever! As I mentioned in my thank you email in July, the staff were overwhelmed by the kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity shown to us by our parents at the end of term. You are an amazing group! We wish all our July leavers a very happy time at their new schools and we look forward to seeing them all
soon! We also wish Maria well in her new role.
We are ready for the new term! I hope our new families (and existing cohort!) are keen to start and will have a very happy time at St. Andrew’s. I know that our current parents, Committee and staff will make sure that our new Pre-school families feel welcome.
I am delighted to inform those of you who do not know that Caro has now joined our team as a permanent member of staff. We wish her well in her new role as Key Person to our youngest children.
It is always lovely to welcome back the children who were with us last year and to hear about their holidays and adventures. It is also super to welcome and to get to know our new children and families. The staff team has met over the summer and will be working onsite for the week beginning 10th September to prepare and plan a wide range of exciting topics and activities. Our Home Visits will take place during the week commencing 10th. There will be a few noticeable changes to our routine from the start of term – please bear with us if these changes do not work! It is good to try these things!
- We will use the cloakroom for ALL children’s coats, bags etc. The pegs will be renumbered and spread out, with the addition of a small picture on each peg to help the children with recognition. We will not be using the trolley in the main hall for any possessions.
- There will be a box for all water bottles on the table in the front hall, rather than the children having to carry everything through from the front hall. We plan to continue our morning greeting and notices in the front hall. We will then open both sets of double doors into the main hall to make it more inviting for the children going in to start the session.
- We are going to have a self-registering area in the main hall with a member of staff to help the children. We are not going to use the coloured name cards. Instead we are going to have names on lovely wood slices which the children will then hang onto a tree.
- We are going to try out a more flexible snack time for the children, as well as having longer periods of uninterrupted play during the morning sessions to allow the children to develop their play in more depth.
- We plan to have a shorter ‘Show and Tell’ time in the mornings and would really like to focus on items related to the number and colour of the week for the first half term, adding the letter of the week later in the term.
Please remember that staff and Committee have your children’s best interests at heart, so if you ever have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to talk to any of us at any time. I always like to remind families that communication with us is extremely important!
We have 4 key groups and in age order they will be led by:
- Katherine Linthwaite
- Jo-Anne Stobbart
- Katarzyna Ouadahi
- Caro Brunner
If you are one of our new families, you will receive information regarding setting up your accounts for Tapestry during the week of 10th September. If you are interested in finding out a bit more about ‘Tapestry’, there are several useful online tutorials.
Please do check our website from time to time to keep you up to date with changes to important documents such as the Pre-school Policies, the Welcome Book and details and dates of future events. We also send out notification of events and news by email, as well as giving out essential information at the beginning and end of each session. If you miss these notices at the start of the session, we also have a daily notices board that we display in the front hall. Our parent Facebook page will also repeat any important notices.
Finally, please note that if your child attended Pre-school in the last academic year, they will be in a new Key Group in September, as well as having a new number for the cloakroom and register!
Hilary Coome