The property, Ellsbridge House, was previously the vetinerary teaching centre for Norton Radstock College and sits in 2.2 acres of grounds beside the A4 just outside Keynsham between Bristol and Bath. The nursery is due to open in September 2012.

As with all our other nurseries, Snapdragons Keynsham will provide fun and stimulating learning supported by qualified and caring staff. The gardens and additional buildings at the site also offer an exciting opportunity to expand our Forest School sessions and outdoor learning, including growing our own resources and caring for nursery pets.

The nursery will create around 40 jobs and we have already begun actively seeking the high calibre staff that will allow us to maintain our existing exemplary standards. The new team will be supported by a team of Snapdragons colleagues who will share the expertise we have built up over the past 14 years. Additionally an on-site training centre will be established where professional development and training courses will be run by outside professionals and qualified Snapdragons Teachers for the staff from all of our nurseries.

We have some truly exciting plans that we know will benefit all the children, families and staff in Snapdragons and we really want you to be a part of it. Take a look at the plans and watch this space for more news.

Starting our roundup as per usual with our under twos in the Baby Rooms, we follow the faint aroma of cooking and head into the kitchens to discover the babies hard at work on their fairy cakes and brownies. The end result was as delicious as always so well done to our ‘little chefs’.

Outside of the kitchen, you could also find the babies busy creating their new birthday balloons, painting and sticking, adding the final touches so that they could adorn the walls of their rooms, celebrating their birthdays. They also spent some time plunging their hands into shaving foam, mixing in glitter and pasta amongst other things and creating some wild concoctions!

Babies weren’t the only ones indulging in messy play this week though. For those of you who ventured down to the Koala room on Monday, you would have born witness to the toddlers enjoying sensory play with bubble wrap, tin foil, shaving foam and paint! If you survived the mess then you would have seen how much they enjoyed spreading it around and squidging it between their fingers and watching it rain down!

With Valentine’s Day approaching next week, Koalas have really enjoyed working on some special Valentine cards for their loved ones which we’re sure you will all be delighted to see next week! Pandas also prepared for this and designed some cards of their own but also chose to make some heart-shaped biscuits for their mummies and daddies to chew on.

The Koalas were lucky enough to get a reading of ‘Whatever Next’ from their Norland student, Simone, who was on a placement with them. After the story they created their own magic box, decorating it up in their own style. The group consensus was that this was now a helicopter and so they all boarded for a magical adventure to the seaside!

Panda Room were stomping about on a Gruffalo hunt this week. Our super investigators were able to successfully locate the owl, the mouse, the fox and the Gruffalo himself! Next Tuesday they are hosting a ‘Gruffalo day’ so would love the Panda children to come dressed as a Gruffalo and enjoy the fun!

Pre-School have been getting up to lots of fun things, exploring stripes and painting animals that have stripes on them. This was all linked into their learning about the artist Mark Rothko.

They have had a huge fascination looking after the baby dolls, enjoying washing them in the bubble-filled water tray and giving them a fun baby bath! The children then decided that they would love to visit the real babies upstairs and spend some time with them - albeit with a distinct lack of bathing this time.

Out in the garden the children have enjoyed exploring in the sand and making collages using natural materials. They also squirted some blue and red paint out of the bottles to use for some beautiful butterfly paintings on the big outdoor painting wall.

Finally, our children in the Parrot room have been having fun reading the children’s classic, ‘Elmer’, taking part in activities to run alongside this. They were really excited to get the opportunity to re-create Elmer with a selection of tissue paper squares and using a variety of watercolours to mix together in the theme of Mark Rothko. Overall, our Pre-Schoolers have all been very kind and caring towards each other recently, showing a real sense of family in the rooms which is lovely to see.

Thank you for reading this week - join us again next week for more!

Also, Big Steps, which runs term-time only will also therefore be on holiday for a week and will be returning that same date.

This will allow all of our Managers to concentrate their efforts on the day to day running of the nurseries and most importantly the children.

We do appreciate that this is a big change for many parents that have been with Snapdragons for a number of years but we are keen to delegate this growing responsibility to a team of professionals who are trained in this area.

For those of you who have signed up for our new e-billing service you will now have received your electronic bill which for the first time has been sent to you from our dedicated invoicing email address. Any invoicing queries or questions should be directed to this address where a team of accounts wizards will be waiting and happy to assist you.

The contact details for the Finance and Administration team is: accounts@snapdragonsnursery.com. At the present time we do not have a dedicated phone number for this team but this is currently being organised and in the mean time we are happy to call you back so that you can speak to someone directly if you provide a contact number at the time of enquiry.

Please ensure that all invoicing queries are sent via this method however your Nursery Manager will still be able to assist you with basic questions or account balances.

Any families that have not yet signed up for e-billing can do so by emailing the above address stating the name of their child and the nursery that they attend or by advising the Nursery Manager.

Thank you for your understanding and co-operation throughout this period of change.

Back in the warmth of the indoors, the Pre-Schoolers have also been captured by the magic of The Gruffalo, acting out the story, listening to the CD and creating amazing Gruffalo pictures with paints, crayons and oil pastels.
The babies have been busy exploring the depths of their dressing up box, leaving us with a wonderful array of firemen, doctors and ballet dancers! But they still found time to get stuck into the coloured sand, using it to create some beautiful artwork and explore the different textures.
Toddlers were warming their bellies meanwhile with the taste of the freshly baked pizza that they had made. Koala children also baked some colourful 'Elmer' biscuits, using the opportunity to also talk about colours and shapes that they could see.
Elmer was not the only book that the toddlers were reading this week however. They also spent time with their new book of the month, 'The Caterpillar's Wedding', which tells the story of how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. They will spend more time looking into the book as the month progresses and we will be back with more activity recaps next week!

Little Steps is a brand new initiative at Snapdragons Nursery that is designed to help toddlers with their move into Pre-School over the summer term.
This group will be led by a member of the toddler team with the support of a Pre-School practitioner and will focus on preparing the children for aspects of Pre-School life, for example, encouraging them to be independent in pouring their own drinks and serving their own meals.
They will then become used to a more independent learning environment where they can free-flow and choose their own learning activities, and they enjoy more focused group time with their key person as well as a longer transition time overall.
The children would then all move as a group, with their friends, at the beginning of September.

Why are we implementing this?

The summer term in Pre-School is our busiest time of year with the staff spending time preparing the children for school, working with visiting reception teachers and completing transition reports.
With this in mind, we often find that children starting from toddlers in this term struggle to adapt to the busy environment which, for some children may not be beneficial for their age or stage of development.

How will Little Steps work?

The sessions will take place within the child’s current room but in a special area. In this area there will be age appropriate resources that will support the children with their development and their overall transition to Pre-School.
There will also be a separate planning sheet completed by Kat Davey (Head of Pre-School) to ensure that the children are receiving the appropriate learning activities.

Which children will this affect?

If your child’s birthday is between April 1st and August 31st 2009 then they will be part of this new group.
These dates coincide with the government Early Years Entitlement and so you will receive your first term’s allocation in September. Please speak to Sara or Rosie if you have any questions about this entitlement or if you would like to know more about free, term-time only sessions.

If you have any questions or are unsure about anything in the above please come and chat to Kat (Head of Pre-School), Becca / Terri (Head of Toddlers) or Sara (Nursery Manager).

Babies have been exploring different Chinese foods including vegetable spring rolls, prawn crackers, bean sprouts and noodles which was a great success. Other activities included investigating the toddler garden and the different equipment, making cheese and Marmite puffs and developing a sensory area in the ladybird room.

Meanwhile in toddlers, the smell of freshly made biscuits filled the air as the children learnt about the seasons by making leaf biscuits as well as visiting Victoria Park to explore the natural environment. Chinese New Year was also celebrated through creative activities including art and dance. The toddlers also ensured the toy babies were squeaky clean by washing them in lavender and mint scented water bubbles while listening to relaxing tranquil music. Shapes have been a hot topic this week as the children have spent time counting the corners and developing their knowledge and awareness in this area. Hours of adventure spiralled from a large empty cardboard box which the children used to develop their social skills and their imaginations, what was once just a box became a robot which entertained the children for a number of days.

We are always looking for opportunities to develop the children’s knowledge of the world at times when its relevant, as there are children with Italian roots in Koalas it seemed fitting to have an Italian themed day. Friday children came to nursery wearing the colours of the flag and spent the day dancing to Italian music, decorating the Italian flag and making pizza from scratch.  

Across Pre-school the children have had an amazing time in forest school. They have enjoyed making mud pies, digging for worms, playing hide and seek, exploring in the trees and making fires in order to enjoy a nice drink of warm chocolate after all their hard work! Within the rooms the children continued to show an interest in exploring the sand and role playing with the boats in the water.

For Chinese New Year some of the children made Chinese lanterns and decorated Chinese dragons, Parrot children performed and recorded a special “Dragon dance” wearing dragon masks that they made to celebrate the occasion. Finally the Pre-School team wish to welcome their three new children who have had a fantastic first week and have settled in extremely well.

If anyone saw the flash of a luminous jacket whilst in Homebase this week then it could have just been a Homebase employee, but it could also have been some of our babies, out for a walk with the staff. They were on a secret mission to find some seeds and bulbs that they could plant and watch the germinating process over the forthcoming months. The babies really enjoyed extending their ‘outing area’ and the sights that the riverside store had to offer.

Back within the nursery walls the babies also had the opportunity to get a little bit messy, much in the way that babies do, as they played with toy animals in gloop and gave the baby dolls a bath. Without mentioning the shaving foam and the jelly and it is safe to say that the messy rooms got a thorough working out this week.

The children in Koalas were making a beautiful collage of fire for our Chinese Dragons as part of their Chinese New Year celebrations. The children are looking forward to the main party next week when the New Year kicks off once and for all. They also were excited to get their hands on one of our iPads, matching animals and interacting with the story of Cinderella.

The Pre-School rooms have had a fantastic week, using their imaginations to create wonderful models of islands using lollipop sticks, feathers, glitter, glue and sparkly pipe cleaners. The children were also busy making some beautiful stained-glass windows and watching the sun shine through them.

The Pre-School children have also been spending time looking at the Chinese New Year and they too have been making a collage, but of a dragon for their wall! They coupled it with a papier mache dragon’s head from recycled materials and will be using this as part of their Chinese New Year celebrations from next week.

Our children in the After School Club have been painting their favourite animals and creating clay models of them on a quest it seems to completely ‘junglify’ the room. Not wanting to feel left out, they have also been talking about the Chinese New Year celebrations and are looking forward to this starting next week.