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Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" WE WOULD KINDLY ASK ALL PARENTS TO PLEASE TELEPHONE THE NURSERY ON 01206 560695 BY 9AM IF YOUR CHILD WILL NOT BE ATTENDING NURSERY ON THAT DAY. IN ADDITION WE WOULD ASK YOU ALL TO READ AND FAMILARISE YOURSELVES WITH OUR SICKNESS EXCLUSION TIMES ON PAGE 9 THANK YOU Nursery Manager Overflow CarparkWe are pleased to announce that Stanway Evangelical Church have said we can use their car park Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 4:30-6:30. Welcome to the February edition of the Monkey news!
We at Monkey Puzzle have had a very busy January, with lots of activities and experiences throughout the rooms around our Topic of 'Healthy Habits / Emotions'. The children have enjoyed exploring these with their key person and peers and have developed a much better understanding around 'How to stay safe', 'How to be healthy' and 'How we are feeling', which has happened throughout a range of doctors, dentists, police themed role play and activities.
Another key topic that we have discussed and explored has been emotions. This has given children the space and time to be able to talk about their emotions, what makes them happy and sad, and with some of our older children we have been talking about how our actions can make others feel. This has allowed lots of exploration and discussion about one of our books of the month being 'The Colour Monster' a book about a monster whos emotions are all jumbled and their journey on understanding the different emotions.
At the end of January we celebrated burn's night. A Scottish celebration. The children enjoyed looking at the different tartans and patterns and some even had a go at creating their very own tartans. The children enjoyed looking at pictures of Scotland and talked about the different pictures with their key people and peers.
As we move into February the nursery will be exploring the theme of the world and countries. This will allow children to explore the world in which they live, their natural environments and discuss the different countries. Activities that allow children the positive impact on exploring about the world in which they live and also how they can help to look after their natural enviornments.
As always we love to receive your feedback on the activities that we carry out, we love your engagement on our socials and more importantly we love when our parents come into the nursery to talk with the children about their careers or special talents that they may have. If this is something that you would like to do, then please discuss this with the management team.
James.
Isla, William, Thomas, Satviki, Oriana, Blossom, Fredrik, Francis, Hudson, Rafe, and Felix.
Welcome to all new children and parents who join our existing Monkey Puzzle community.
Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us"
Nursery News:
WE WOULD KINDLY ASK ALL PARENTS TO PLEASE TELEPHONE THE NURSERY ON 01206 560695 BY 9AM IF YOUR CHILD WILL NOT BE ATTENDING NURSERY ON THAT DAY. IN ADDITION WE WOULD ASK YOU ALL TO READ AND FAMILARISE YOURSELVES WITH OUR SICKNESS EXCLUSION TIMES ON PAGE 9 THANK YOU
Pick up and Drop off at MP:
Due to busy times at pick up and drop off please be advised that your child's key person is unable to give you a detailed and lengthy handover. We have informed our staff to keep handovers to around 30 seconds, unless there are forms such as accident / medication / funding to be signed. All information regarding what your child has eaten, how they have slept etc is all on the parentzone app.
Borrow Bags:
We at the nursery have been busy creating a range of borrow bags that you can borrow from the nursery. These bags contain a range of objects that allow you to talk to your children about key transitions that may happen throughout their lives.
The borrow bags we current have are:
Potty Training // New House // New Baby // Emotions.
If you would like to borrow and use one of these bags at home please speak with a member of the team and we can arrange this for you.
Nursery Gifts:The team would like to thank everyone who has given gifts to their child's key person, this could be due to the child leaving the setting or transitioning rooms.As much as they love receiving the food based cakes and treats. They are unfortunately not able to enjoy these due to allergies in the nursery. If you would like to give individuals gifts could we suggest a voucher / personal items instead of food based gifts. Thank you in advance. Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 2 February 2024 NewsletterImportant Dates for 2024!
Our inset days for 2024 are:
Thursday 28th March 2024 &
Tuesday 27th August 2024
(Please be advised the nursery will be closed on both inset days)
Easter Holiday
Friday 29th March 2024 (Good Friday)
Monday 1st April 2024 (Easter Monday)
(Please be advised the nursery will be closed on both Good Friday and Easter Monday)
Preschool Graduation:
Thursday 22nd August 2024
Mealtimes at MPPlease be advised we have set mealtimes at Monkey Puzzle. This is to help build routine and consistency at the nursery. The times are as followed. Breakfast 7:30-8:30AM (last sitting around 8.25ish) AM Snack: 10AM Lunch: 11.30AM PM Snack: 2PM Tea: 3.30PMBasic Care:
At Monkey Puzzle we strive to deliver exceptional care towards all the children within our care with basic care being the top of our agenda.
If you do have any concerns regarding the basic care of your child please do not hesitate to get in contact with the management team who will quickly look into and deal with any issues.
01206 560695 Nursery Parent Number: INFORMATIONWhat will we be learning this month? Dates for your Diary:
10th February : Chinese New Year
13th February : Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)
14th February : Valentines Day
Monthly Theme:Staff Welcome
Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us"Home Learning:
This months home learning is to create a collage of your favourite found treasures on a walk in the natural environments. This could be some favourite leaves that they have found or the perfect pebble from the beach. This is a great way to begin initial conversations about the world in which we live.
As always we love seeing what you have gotten up to, so don't forget to send in pictures of your exciting adventures for us to share within the rooms and nursery.
The World / Countries
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 3 February 2024 Newsletter Hello i'm Tas,I am a member of the Dolphins team and work closely with all our children aged 2-3years.
I have alot of experience working with children and joined Monkey Puzzle last year.
When im not at nursery I enjoy spending time with my family at home.
Staff Birthdays
Books of the MonthThroughout December we have celebrated lots of staffs birthdays. We at Monkey Puzzle love celebrating a birthday and would like to wish the following another 'Happy Birthday' ... Danni-Rose, Katie, Joanne, Kirsty and Roksana.
Guess How Much I Love You
by Sam McBratney
Sophia Loves Pancake Day:
by Shahida Suleman
Jo Jingles will be coming to visit the Starfish this month Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" January Recap Starfish
Throughout January in Starfish we have been exploring and expressing our emotions and well being. We have been doing this with a variety of activities focused around our interests. To begin with we explored some coloured oat fireworks to celebrate New Years, the children looked at visuals of fireworks and are encouraged to recognise colour names, we added different coloured shredded paper in for an extra sensory texture and the children are able to rip it apart and wave it around.
We then focused a little bit on healthy eating and the importance of it, the children enjoyed their very own teddy bears picnic role play activity, we incorporated this activity in to their snack routine talking about healthy foods and how they are good for our bones, teeth and body. To extend this activity further we added a few unhealthy role play foods in so we could discuss other agents such as sugar and salt. The children use their gross motor skills to lift the cups up from the mat to their mouths mimicking drinking as well as using their spoons to feed the different teddies around the carpet.
We then enjoyed some music and movement activities, the children in starfish room love to move their bodies to their favourite sounds and they enjoyed the scarf and coloured ball inspired music tray, we turned down the lights and the children explored a range of physical development skills by throwing, rolling and kicking the balls around the room watching as the ball lights up before using the scarfs as a prop to dance with, the children waved the scarves from side to side and played peek a boo with them too.
We then looked at emotions which is of course a really big part of the children's development on Starfish room. The book ‘the colour monster’ played a big part with these activites ranging from a playdough theme, to a sensory rice theme and even a mirror theme.
The children explore their sensory exploration skills using their hands, fingers and pipe cleaners to make marks in the dough, the children use their motor skills to push the pipe cleaners in to the dough watching as the dots appear, they use their hands to scoop up handfuls of coloured rice before sprinkling them down showing a range of emotions as they do so. The children then use the visuals of different emotions to recognise their own feelings, using the mirrors the children make a variety of different facial expression making us all laugh.
The children also celebrated Burns night using blue blocks amongst white flour, the children used the blocks as scooping tools before building small towers with them, the children also rolled the blue balls through white shaving foam watching the marks that they could make :) well done Starfish! X
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 4 February 2024 NewsletterJo Jingles will be coming to visit the Rainbow Dolphins this month Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" January Recap Rainbow Dolphins
Happy new year to you all, we have had a lovely start to the year and all of the children have settled back well in to nursery.
To start off the year we followed the children's interests with activities and the children enjoyed lots of play using the balls to roll back and forth, they also have enjoyed lots of water play and had lots of fun in the garden. The children in Rainbow dolphins love being outside and especially like climbing and rolling on the soft play.
Our first topic this month has been learning about Healthy eating, we have been looking at different pictures of fruits and vegetables and talking about what ones we like and what ones we don’t. We have also made some yummy fruit kebabs and the children enjoyed these at their snack times. This was a great activity for the children as they practiced cutting up their bananas by themselves.
We moved on to learning about exercise and this is something the children love to do whether it be dancing or running around in the garden. Outside we made a balancing beam where the children got to practice and work on their balancing skills.
In Rainbow dolphins we have an area dedicated for the children to come and explore sensory toys and a place to relax and calm down if they are upset. In this area we have lots of resources to help with emotions and learning about what the different emotions are we might feel.
At circle times we read the colour monster book and spoke about how the colour monster feels and how we are also feeling today. We know it can be difficult for some parents to try and encourage their child to brush their teeth so this month we have been learning all about teeth and the dentist. We have used toothbrushes to pretend brushing the toy teeth and spoke about why this is important.
We look forward to a fun filled February where we have lots of fun and exciting activities planned for the children in Rainbow Dolphins.
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 5 February 2024 NewsletterJo Jingles will be coming to visit the Dolphins this month Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" January Recap Dolphins
This month in dolphins we have been very busy in our fun activities including, fine motor skills activities including tweezer and pinching the Pom poms onto the paper plates, we have enjoyed our number bean bags and learning all about our numbers and counting the spots.
Dolphins have all worked together to create a lovely gruffalo wall display by creating lots of lovely pictures including paintings, drawings and sticking to create their gruffalos.
We have been learn how to sound our certain letters when playing with our farm animals, and then discussing the noises of each animal and where they live and what they eat. We have also enjoyed our topic of emotions and looking through the mirrors and discussing with our friends how we are feeling and why we feel the way we feel.
Well done dolphins.
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 6 February 2024 NewsletterThroughout each week the children in Octopus will be taking part in a range of Science, PE and 'Letter and Sounds' activities.
This Month:
Jo Jingles will be coming to visit the children in Octopus.The children in Octopus will be taking part in a Tennis lesson. Our Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" January Recap OctopusWe have had a great start to the new year in the Octopus room. We started off the year with a week of things that we liked.
The children did pieces of artwork based around what they like and we incorporated their favourite interests into our activities. For example the children in Octopus Love construction activities and so we had lots of different construction on offer.
The Octopus room had a delivery of new resources, some of which were construction so the children were very excited! During January we have also been exploring our emotions using lots of different activities. The children did emotion pictures of themselves, using mirrors and emotion puppets they were able to start to recognise emotions and what they might look like. We also did play dough emotion faces and lots more. All these activities sparked lots of interesting discussion about our feelings.
Another topic we have explored in January was exercise and movement. The children really enjoyed this, they enjoyed creating an obstacle course in the garden and learning how to play the bean game, as well as lots more activities.
At the end of the month we have been looking at and learning about teeth and eyes with some really fun activities that teach us about cleaning teeth and looking after our eyes, we had great fun in our teeth cleaning tuff tray!
Amongst all this fun we also celebrated burns night by making our own tartan designs, the children made some fabulously colourful patterns and really enjoyed this. We have had a great January and are looking forward to a fabulous February!
Preschool Uniform:
If you would like to purchase a preschool top at a cost of £13 please speak to Manjit.
The polo tops come in two sizes: 3-4yrs / 5-6yrs.
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 7 February 2024 NewsletterOur Mission Statement:"Working Together with Families, Staff & Children to Provide an Enabling, Safe and Healthy Environment where Children can Learn, Laugh & Grow with Us" Throughout each week the children in Coral Reef will be taking part in a range of Science, PE and 'Letter and Sounds' activities.
This Month:
KidsLingo will be visiting the children to teach them Spanish.
Jo Jingles will be coming to visit the children in Coral Reef.The children in Coral Reef will be taking part in a Tennis lesson. January Recap Coral ReefTo begin January the children enjoyed enjoyed the topic ‘welcome back’ this allowed the children to get back into the swing of things, taking part in a range of our favourite activities from last year, one of our favourites was definitely the farm!
The children enjoyed exploring all of the different textures in the farm tuff tray as well as making up some of their own stories allowing them to work on their PSED and literacy! As well as this, the children explored the ‘farmers garden’ tray the children enjoyed digging for the carrots and counting how many they could fine allowing us to work on our mathematic skills!
Following on from our ‘welcome back’ topic the children have been learning all about keeping healthy and have taken part in lots of healthy eating activities such as creating our very own vegetable faces, this allowed the children to taste some different vegetables that they may not have tried as well as using their imaginations to create their very own faces to enjoy for snack!
The children also learnt all about the foods that keep them healthy and the foods that are also not so healthy, speaking about how we can eat these foods however, we can’t have them all of the time! This led us onto learning about other ways we can keep our bodies healthy for example, lots of exercise, we have been doing a range of different exercises out in the garden for example, running, obstacle courses and even some lovely dancing.
Another topic we have focused on this month is feelings and emotions, the children have learnt all about the different emotions they may feel through the use of our colour monster book, this has allowed the children to learnt how to best express their feelings, we have enjoyed creating our very own colour monsters as well as doing a colour monster science experiment to see what would happen when we mixed bicarbonate of soda and vinegar!
To end the month the children have learnt all about their teeth and eyes, we have been practising how we clean our teeth and learnt about why it is so important to keep our teeth nice and clean!
This month we have also celebrated burns night, a Scottish celebration, the children created their very own tartan patterns through the used of weaving, allowing them to work on their fine motor skills and well as decorating their very own kilts to take home too!
We have had a super busy January and look forward to February!
Preschool Uniform:
If you would like to purchase a preschool top at a cost of £13 please speak to Manjit.
The polo tops come in two sizes: 3-4yrs / 5-6yrs.
Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 8 February 2024 NewsletterImportant Notes for Parents Refer a Friend. Refer a friend to the nursery and if they register you will receive £100 off of your next month's fees. (T&C's Apply) We are proud to be rated 10/10 on daynurseries.co.uk and voted as a Top 20 day nursery in the East of England.
Thank you to all of the parents/carers who have already reviewed our nursery!
Like us on Facebook for regular updates on the nursery and a chance to win in our quarterly prize draw.
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Monkey Puzzle Colchester www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 9 Facebook Day Nurseries February 2024 Newsletter
Monkey Puzzle Colchester
www.monkeypuzzlecolchester.co.uk 10
ILLNESS / INFECTION EXCLUSION PERIOD
ILLNESS / I NFECTION
EXCLUSION PERIOD
Chicken Pox
Minimum of 5 days from the onset of the rash and all spots must be fully scabbed over before returning to nursery.
Diarrhoea and/or Vomiting
Whilst symptomatic and for 48 hours after their last bout of sickness or diarrhoea.
Hand, Foot and MouthAll blisters must have dried out before returning to nursery, usually this is after approximately 4-6 days.
HeadliceThere is no recommended exclusion period, however, parents are requested to regularly check their children's hair for head lice and we would be grateful if nursery are informed so that other parents can be alerted to check their child's hair.Impetigo Until the lesions have crusted or healed.
MeaslesExcluded for 4 days from the onset of the rash. Scarlet FeverExcluded from nursery for the first 24 hours after starting treatment.
Whooping CoughExcluded for 2 days after starting treatment, or 21 days from the onset of symptoms if no antibiotics.
Prescribed MedicationChildren must be taking any medication for a minimum of 24 hours before coming in to nursery. Medication can only be administered after the 24 hour exclusion even if your child has previously taken the same medication. All medication must be in its original packaging with the prescription label attached and clearly showing child's name.
Immunisations including Flu nasal spray If your child has had any form of immunisations, including the Flu nasal spray, they are not permitted to attend nursery for the following 24 hours due to possible allergic reactions.
Infant Suspension - CalpolIf a child develops a fever whilst at nursery the staff will use natural methods first, such as removing clothing, to try and reduce the temperature while closely monitoring the child and contacting the parents. If a child does require emergency Calpol due to a high temperature of 38 degrees or above the parents will be contacted prior to ensure all details are correct and that they agree with the dosage being given. Parents will then be required to collect their child.
February 2024 Newsletter