September at Atworth
Rolling in to October!
What have we been up to?
Toddlers have been busy baking some gingerbread biscuits (that just so happen to be both gluten and dairy free!). They very carefully weighed out all the ingredients using the scales and took it in turns to tip each ingredient in to the bowl. They used their super strong muscles to mix mix mix the dough, until it was ready to be rolled out and cut into perfect little gingerbread shapes! Some of the toddlers enjoyed this so much they used some of the skills they used such as rolling and ‘cooking’ in their play, using playdough to roll out as dough and making their own campfire in the garden to cook over!
Babies have been exploring the balls! It turns out there’s quite a lot of things you can do with a ball… some of the babies have been practicing their throwing and catching skills with the grownups. Others realised that if you bash the balls together, they make a great noise! And some of us just enjoyed filling and pouring.. filling a container and pouring the balls over our heads! Hilarious!
Pre-school have really dived into their story of the month. The story for them this month is The Gingerbread Man. They have worked together to make a really lovely display of their artwork, of their own pictures of the gingerbread man! They used paint that they mixed themselves to make all different shades of brown with spices to make it super authentic and smell deeeelicious. They are so proud of their pictures and love pointing them out on the wall!
Want to try our recipe at home?!
Ingredients
100g dairy free butter
3tbsp golden syrup
100g dark muscovado sugar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 tbsp ground ginger
1tsp ground cinnamon
225g gluten free plain flour
50g icing sugar (optional, for decoration)
Method
Step one
In a small pan heat the butter, syrup and sugar together until melted, stirring occasionally.
Set to one side to cool slightly.
In a large bowl mix together the bicarb, ginger, cinnamon and flour.
Pour in the melted butter mixture and stir to combine.
Using your hands, bring together to form a dough. This will be soft but will set up in the fridge.
Step two
Take 2 sheets of greaseproof paper, lay the dough down on one, shapre it in to a rectange, and place the other sheet on top of it
Roll the dough out to 1/2cm thick and put flat in the fridge for one hour.
Step three
Heat the oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5 and line a large baking tray with non stick greaseproof paper.
Take the rolled dough out of the fridge and cut out shapes from it.
Step four
Pop the gingerbread in the oven for 15 minutes.
During this time make your icing if you’re using it, combining the icing sugar with 1-2tbsp of water
When the biscuits are cool - decorate and enjoy!
Out and about.. again!
Some of our pre-schoolers were lucky enough to take a trip to Westonbirt! They had loads of fun looking at all of the different trees and finding out what they were called. They even found a tree that fell down and took turns to use their balancing skills to walk from one end to the other. They then spotted some rabbits and followed them reeeeally slowly to see what they were up to! Once they’d finished their adventures they had a lovely picnic in the sun with some sandwiches, fruit, cucumber, breadsticks, and lots of water before popping back on to the bus and singing all the way back to nursery!
Equality and Diversity
We are delving into our equality and diversity policy next month. This means we are looking at how we celebrate diverse cultures and our differences. If you have anyone in your family, maybe grandparents, aunties, uncles or even yourselves that come from a different background, culture, or celebrate something a little bit different we’d love to know about it so that we can include this in our curriculum and celebrations. If this is you then please either get in touch by e-mail or let your child’s key worker know!
Have a look at our policy below
Wellbeing week
Some exciting news that 9th-13th October Is WELLBEING WEEK
This week Is all about the 5 ways to wellbeing, we will be focusing on a different aspect each day and we’d love for you to be involved!
On Monday we will be CONNECTING, so your little ones may visit a different room to have their lunch as an opportunity to mix with some fresh faces or their siblings. We may even treat the staff to a special lunch themselves! (shhh!)
On Tuesday we will be ACTIVE
Please send your little ones in in their active wear!! We will be having a day of getting up and moving. This may include a little bit of walking (maybe even to the park) and a little bit of yoga!
On Wednesday we will be TAKING NOTICE
This is all about focusing on mindfulness and our emotions. We would love to focus on the emotion of joy and laughter! If you have a particularly funny (or unfunny) joke, email this across to us or let the team know so we can pop it in our jar that we will be accessing all week!
How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it!
Thursday is about LEARNING so we are asking you to share your skills. Do you play an instrument, knit, or bake? We’d love you to come in and share your skill with the children or give us some information around it so that we can give it a go ourselves. We will also be sharing some recipes around the skill of cooking!
Friday is about GIVING so we will be focusing on our acts of kindness and snappy superstars! We will be collecting items for our local food bank, so if you are able, we would really appreciate any donations. We will pop a list of accepted items below and in the box for donations that will be just outside the office door. If you want to get involved and nominate your superstar, you can do so below!
accepted items for food bank donations
- tea bags. - soup. - pasta. - tinned fish.
- baked beans. - tinned tomatoes. - cooking sauces. - biscuits.
- chocolate bars. - tinned veg. - long life milk.
- instant coffee. - instant mash. - squash.
- jam. - tinned fruit. - sugar. - tinned spaghetti.
- custard powder. - tinned rice pudding. - long life fruit juice.
- cereal. - sponge pudding. - tinned meat.
Essentials for the colder months
Now that the warm weather has sadly left us, we would like to kindly ask for some updated essentials! We would be really grateful if you could provide the following for your little ones
- a warm coat that is named
- a rain jacket or waterproof suit that is named
- a pair of wellies that are named
- a water bottle that is named
- a pair of shoes regardless of age so we can avoid soggy socks!
- a pair of slippers to wear indoors
We go outside in all weathers!
Dates and reminders
Holly will be off having a lovely time in the USA for the first three weeks of October so if you have any questions regarding Toddlers, please come to myself or Helena!
We of course provide focus planning for each child each term to ensure we are up to date with all of their skills and interests! Please can we ask that if you have not received any e-mails around focus planning to check your junk just in case it is hiding in there. It is really helpful for us to have your input from home.
Dates dates dates
Wellbeing week (with lots of activities!) - 9th-13th October
October half term – 23rd-27th October
Wear it pink - 16th-31st October
Pre-school parents evening - Wednesday 1st November
Babies and Toddlers parents evening - Thursday 2nd November
Concept photography – Friday 10th November
Smores evening – Wednesday 22nd November