C/o Greystones Primary School, Tullibardine Road, SHEFFIELD S11 7GL
Telephone: 0114 2671111 email: greystonespreschool@ymail.com
Dear all,
Welcome to the first of our Preschool newsletters!
As a management team Danielle and I will endeavour to keep you up to date about news, events and what we are getting up to in the setting. Over the last week we have been preparing the setting for our return today and have enjoyed meeting some of you for the first time and for others it has been really good to reconnect with you after the summer holidays and to find out what you have been up to.
As you are aware Greystones Preschool is a registered charity that is run by a group of trustees. The trustees are all volunteers that are parents of children that attend the setting now or have done so in the past. Most of our funding comes from the funded learning hours (FEL) or the extended funded hours (EFE). Currently we receive £4.43 per hour for these hours from Sheffield City Council which sadly does not cover the cost of our day to day expenses. As outlined in the welcome booklet the setting makes an additional service charge of £3.00 per session or £6.00 per day to cover the additional costs of consumable items. For those of you whose children do not qualify for the funded hours at present we charge fees of £6.00 per hour. Please note that the setting does not charge an additional service charge to those families that are paying fees.
In order for us to enhance your child’s learning experience at preschool we run a fundraising committee which meets once every half term to arrange activities that will help us to buy much needed pieces of equipment and resources.
Our setting will be holding our AGM at Preschool on Monday 10th October 2022, starting at 7.30 pm. Please come along if you would like to find out more about how you can get involved and support our setting.
Now for the fun stuff!
During this half term as well as getting to know your child and settling them into the setting we are going to be looking at the topics of ‘amazing me’, families, similarities and differences and autumn.
We will be reading ‘it’s my house’, ‘Bear at home’; ‘My Family’ and ‘It’s good to be me’
We have set up our role play area as a home corner and will be playing some communication and language games as part of our back room activities. We will be talking about new beginnings, feelings, rules, friends, diversity and kindness (PSED). In our outside time we will be working on our gross motor skills and on spatial awareness (PD). In our maths groups and at register time we will be looking at numbers 1-5 and counting. We will be reading lots of stories and will be working on Phase 1, aspects 1-2 (environmental and instrumental sounds) in our Literacy groups. We will be learning about families, what makes me me, the concept of growing up and similarities and differences. (UW). Finally we will be using all sorts of mediums to be creative (EAD).
As part of this we are going to talk about people who are special to us and would like to request that you send a photograph of your family so that we can display these in the setting. We will also be looking at the weather and the changing of the seasons, so if you would like to collect any autumn treasure, coloured leaves, twigs and conkers whilst you are out and about over the weekend and send them into the setting that would be fab!
During our last Ofsted inspection we were asked to provide activities that you may wish to do with your child at home. These are not mandatory, but hopefully fun activities to enhance their learning. We are going to call these activities ‘home learning challenges’. Look out for these at the end of the newsletters.
Housekeeping!
As the weather gets more unsettled as we transition into autumn, please can you makes sure that your child brings the correct clothing for the weather conditions, for example, a waterproof coat and wellies on a wet day.
We have also noticed today that children are bringing whole grapes and whole cherry tomatoes as part of their lunch, whilst we encourage healthy eating, we are aware that these items if left whole can become a choking hazard and we ask therefore that you cut these before sending them in with your child.
Home learning challenges
Read your favourite book, talk about it and retell the story (Communication and Language)
Play a game that involves turn taking (Physical Development)
Go on an autumn walk, look at the changing colours and listen to the sounds (Communication and Language).
I am looking forward to spending time with your children in the weeks ahead as we have fun and learn together..
Take care,
Julie.
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