Spring 2024
Ourselves and Chinese New Year
Our two projects for January/February this year have been ourselves and the current Chinese New Year project. The children have enjoyed and are enjoying these.
We hope you all find the home links interesting and are able to share some aspect of the projects with your children at home.
Dates for your diary.
We break up for the Easter holidays on Thursday 28th March and return on Monday 15th April.
May Day is Monday 6th May and playgroup will be closed on this day.
Contacting us re absences.
Can we remind you to use the playgroup mobile number 07516936620 before 9am in the morning to let us know if your child will be absent. It is really important as practitioner on door duty needs to get back into the room as soon as possible to work with the children.
Policies and Procedures
A full copy of our policies and procedures is available for you to view on our parent’s library. If anyone would like a full copy sent out to them please email Lesley at romurcplaygroup@btinternet.com.
Online Safety
Does your child use your mobile phone, I pad, laptop, computer or any other internet enabled device? If the answer is yes, then are they aware of internet safety? We are introducing the children to internet safety in the setting, helping them to understand how to keep themselves safe online.
It is really important that you talk to your child about this at home as well.
We are using https://www.childnet.com/resources/smartie-the-penguin
This is a story specifically aimed at children aged 3 to 7, and reinforces the fact that if they see anything unusual, they must tell a grown up.
Food for thought – if you have older children, are you aware that the minimum age for most social media sites is at least 13? This includes Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Musical.ly and Skype. For WhatsApp it’s 16. Don’t be fooled by your children telling you that all their friends are using it! Help your children to stay safe online.
Our Website.
Our web address is https://romfordurcplaygroup.wordpress.com. A copy of our newsletter is posted on there so that you can access the information or check dates through the next term. Please tell family and friends about our website if they are looking for a playgroup place for their children.
Letter of the week.
Our first letter after half term is z.
We are continuing to introduce a letter of the week to the children each week. We are using Jolly Phonics, where the children learn a song to help with learning the letter sounds. With Jolly Phonics the sounds are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically) that makes learning the alphabet easy and fun. This enables children to begin building words as early as possible. The letter order is as follows:
s, a, t, i, p, n, c/k, e, h, r, m, d, g, o, u, l, f, b, j, z, w, v, y, x. (See the links below for the songs)
Within the Jolly Phonics programme children are taught the 42 main letter sounds. These include alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.
Although we don’t focus on the diagraphs at playgroup, they are a really good tool for pre reading and writing and if you’d like to look at them with your children on their way to starting school we’ve attached 2 links below.
Diagraphs are: – ai, oa, ie, ee, or, ng, oo, ch, sh, th, th, qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar
School Leavers.
We know that those children leaving us in July for school in September have all made their applications. Once you have your child’s place confirmed, could you please email us so that we can collate a list of schools that we need to contact. We will be inviting the teachers from the children’s schools to visit them in our setting.
Tooth Friendly Nursery
Some of you may have noticed on the notice board that we have a Silver certificate as a tooth friendly nursery. We are proud of this and want the best tooth care for the children at our playgroup and would like to support you in looking after your children’s teeth at home. Therefore we may speak to you from time to time regarding your child’s teeth.
Coats on entry to playgroup
Can we ask you to leave your child’s coat on them for entry to playgroup please. We are working on independence skills with them – unzipping their coats and taking them off and then using the coat rack independently to hang their coats up.
Practice putting coats and shoes on
We have a lot of children that need to help to get on their coats and change their shoes for going out into the garden. Could we ask you all to begin practising this with your children at home to help support their independence.
Thank you.
Days Out
There are a number of places that you can visit for free with your children in London that make a good day out. Try some of the following:-
Young V & A at Bethnal Green – https://www.vam.ac.uk/young/visit
Museum of London Docklands – https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands
The Natural History Museum – https://www.nhm.ac.uk/
Romford United Reformed Church Playgroup 