Meet our Inclusion Manager

Hi, my name is Alison Shires and I am the Inclusion Manager for Snapdragons.

I have worked in the early years sector for over thirty years. I have been the Manager at our Atworth nursery for the past five years, after leaving my role of 22 years as Senior Early Years Inclusion Adviser for Wiltshire Council.

As early years providers, we want each child in our care to have the best possible start to their nursery education. Snapdragons welcomes all children and, for some of the children in our care, this will mean additional support, training or resources are required to ensure they can develop in all areas learning and development covered by the Government’s document “Early Years Foundation Stage, Development Matters”.

In each of the nurseries we have a named Special Educational Need and Disability Co-ordinators, known as SENDcos. SENDcos have attended specialist training provided by the local authority in your area. They will be able to support you and your child to access the appropriate professionals to help. In nursery they will support you and your child’s key person to implement appropriate support. We will monitor and evaluate their progress and share this with you at regular meetings, that you will be invited to attend.

My role in Snapdragons as Inclusion Manager is to support the nursery SENDco in their role, in addition to the support they receive from their Local Authority.

I am here to support you the parents / carers. Please contact me you should you need to discuss any concerns, worries and successes of your child at alison@snapdragonsnursery.com

Spring menus at Snapdragons

As we reach the beginning of spring, it's time for another menu change and we've added some delicious seasonal dishes for the children. These menus will all take effect from March 21st and run through until June, when summer starts. If you'd like to know any details about any of the recipes on on menus, then please send over your feedback to us on our healthy eating page.

Photo galleries return!

When we updated our website last year, one of the things lost in the shuffle were our extensive photo galleries. Moving to a updated site meant that the galleries didn't quite work as they did before, so we instead had to cycle the albums on display, meaning that hordes of our favourite photos were lost to time after just a few short weeks.

We've heard your feedback though and you wanted the galleries back! So, we've worked tirelessly to find a solution and now have one. The galleries now operate almost identically to how they did before, so no more disappearing - the albums will be persistent.

The actual albums themselves are hosted via each nursery's private Google Photos account. This is the same account that we use for sharing our photos between devices and then uploading to Parent Zone, whilst at nursery. It is completely secure and the photo rights are owned by Snapdragons, not Google.

Feel free to head over to your nursery's page now and view their photos. We'll be adding more and more over the coming weeks, as we capture all of the fantastic moments of magic during your child's day. We hope you enjoy the new galleries!

Stories With Snapdragons: Stick Man!

We have been on the Stick Man trail at Westonbirt Arboretum this week and wanted to hear the full story for ourselves so, this episode, we read the beloved 'Stick Man', by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler. It is read by Mary Llewellin and Rhys Williams.

Stick Man lives in the family tree With his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three. But it's dangerous being a Stick Man. A dog wants to play with him, a swan builds her nest with him. He even ends up on a fire! Will he ever get back to the family tree.

Stories With Snapdragons: Snowflakes

Mia has come to live with her Grandma in a land of forests and snow. It isn't at all like her old life in the city, and at first she feels very different from the new children she sees. But when she watches the snow falling around her one night, Mia realises that she is just like one of the snowflakes - unique and perfect in her own way. A beautiful story about new beginnings and making friends by CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell.

This story is read by Zoe Leverett, Head of Toddlers at Snapdragons Horfield.