Notices and Reminders

World Book Day – Thursday 2 March

Thursday 2 March is World Book Day! We are celebrating this national event by transforming the Drawing Room and the Junior Hall into two huge bookshops provided by the Travelling Book Company. Pupils will have the chance to browse the books and make purchases.

As part of this national celebration of reading, each pupil will receive a £1 book token, redeemable against any book purchased on 2 March.

As in previous years, we invite all pupils and staff to dress up as their favourite character from a book, and we ask that £1 is donated to the World Book Day charity via this link

Please click here before Monday 20 February to complete the Google form confirming whether your child can participate in the book sale, their maximum spend amount and that you are happy for the cost of the book/books to be added to your account.

This Week in Woodlands

As I write this, I know that many of you are starting to prepare for the half term break and your children are excited about the adventures they know await them. I love the way that they will excitedly tell me; ‘Shirley, do you know it’s only four more sleeps until I go to see my grandma?’ Have you ever thought about how much development has had to take place for a three year old to express this? They will have developed a concept of time, an ability to pose a question, an understanding of less and more, an ability to use different tenses as they speak and confidence to initiate a conversation with an adult. All that wrapped up in one question!  That’s what I love about teaching this age group – so much is changing and developing each week. So you can imagine, if you have not seen for yourself, just how much your children have changed and developed over this first five week long, Lent half term.

The team and I have had the privilege of working with and getting alongside your children over this past half term. We want to thank you for your support, for replying on Tapestry, for attending our ‘Special Adult in the House’ events and we also want to thank Kate and Amy, our wonderful Reps for keeping the channels of communication between you and the Nursery open and active.

Some highlights from the last week:

Last Friday, Orange Class enjoyed a day of dressing up, role play, nail painting and story telling. The children, (and teachers) excitedly came to school in their favourite costumes or clothes, ready to tell each other about their particular character. They enjoyed two storytelling sessions; one about ‘The Dragon Who Came to Tea’ and the second one, an ‘in the moment’ drama, where events occurred and the plot developed, dependent on the comments and actions of all the characters in Orange Class. Every child thought of their unique, character name and actively took part in creating the story. The age-old ‘goodies verses baddies’ theme wove its way throughout the developing drama, with lots of screaming and running away from the baddies and then, working as a team to enable the goodies to win. Such a fun, active and wonderful day.

Last Friday, the children in Green Class had so much fun learning about Germany during their final day of learning about countries week. They were excited to welcome Arthur’s mummy into our classroom for a question and answer type interview all about Germany, as she is German. The children practised their developing skills of ‘asking’ questions and the teachers were impressed to hear that the Woodlanders’ questions were relevant to Germany.  Julia helped the children to speak some German words and she sang us a traditional German song – Oh Tannenbaum.

The Green Class children then initiated some German-style dancing that they had first seen on our big TV!

A big thank you to all the other families who contributed and supported Green Class for this project work.

Have a happy, active, fun and safe half term and we will see you all in a week.

Shirley Hayman

Shirley Hayman
Head of Woodlands Nursery

From the Junior Librarians

I Really Really Love You So by Karl Newson

A simple but highly entertaining book following Bushbaby as he tries to figure out the best way to show his love and affection.

The comic illustrations are complemented by the rhyming text as he goes to greater and greater lengths to demonstrate his love.

In the end, perhaps it can be achieved in a simple way.