I hope that you have all enjoyed the Easter break and that all of you who have been allocated school places are delighted! I look forward to chatting to you all about schools over the next few weeks.

I am sure that some of you will have seen the article about Outstanding settings in Reading in ‘Get Reading’ during the break. Staff and Committee were thrilled to read the article and we are very proud of St. Andrew’s! Here is the link:
https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/best-nurseries-readingrevealed-16068427.

After some good news I have some sad news. Katherine and Emma will be leaving us at the end of this academic year. Katherine joined us 5 years ago and working with us at Pre-school has been the only job that she has had since she trained and qualified with us. Katherine has loved working at St. Andrew’s and it has been a very hard decision for her! She feels that it is time to gain experience in other areas of education. Initially she hopes to gain experience in a local primary school before possibly studying to become a teacher. Emma’s childminding (which she has always done alongside Pre-school) has become busier for her and she will concentrate on the brilliant job that she is doing with the families. Emma will become a bank staff member for us. Both Katherine and Emma will keep in touch with us all. I am very proud of them both and we wish them great happiness and success in their future careers and lives.

As I always say at the start of this term, each term is busy in a different way, but the summer term seems to fly by! For several our children, it is the last full term with us, which does not seem possible. Our leaving children will start their visits to school in the next couple of months and I will be meeting some of the teachers and visiting some schools during this half term. After half term we will be welcoming our September 2019 intake as families start coming in for their settling in sessions. We will also be arranging our Home Visits which will take place in September.

Later this half term we will be preparing detailed end of term transition reports for children moving on to school. We will also be writing end of term reports for the children staying with us at Pre-school.

As we plan to spend as much time as possible outside this term we would like to organise a working party to help re-paint the roadway, the alphabet snake and the hopscotch area. We would be very grateful for helpers in our garden for general tidying
and maintenance. Please let me know if you would be willing to come in and help during a session. We would also love more donations of bulbs, tomato plants, bean plants etc. Thank you to those of you who have already brought items in for us.

Have a lovely first half of the Summer term.

Hilary.