Dear Parents,
Welcome back! We hope you have all managed to have a lovely summer break and the children have been looking forward to returning to Rainbows!
Our holiday club was a huge success and loved by children and aunties. Parents too hopefully! It is something we will hopefully continue to do if required.
We would like to welcome all our new children and their families and we hope you enjoy coming to our preschool. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate in asking.
All information you need will be posted into the memo section of your Tapestry account, along with all our newsletters and other correspondences.
Our Stay and Play sessions can now run regularly again. Just let us know when you would like to visit! It is a great opportunity to spend some time with your child while they are here. You do not have to stay for the full session, just time for a story or a quick play will be very welcome.
If you have not yet done so, please can you log into Tapestry and complete the ‘All about me’ section. The information you provide is very useful to ensure your child is settled and happy. This includes our new and existing parents.
We open our doors at 08:30 or 9:15am, however, we can offer an 08:15 start if required. We open our doors at the end of the day at 3:15, through to 4pm. You can pick up your children from 3pm to help with the school run.
If you applied for 30 hours free funding, please be aware that you have to update your eligibility code every 3 months. You will receive email reminders, as do we.
Invoices have been emailed to you, but if you haven’t received one please mention it to us. We will now be charging the termly fee of £30 each term rather than annually.
All of the enrolment forms need to be checked each year, so if you have any changes for example, change of address, phone numbers or new people living at home etc please let us know straight away.
Please continue to keep an eye on the whiteboard which will be in the outside area. It has up to date information such as, ‘Story of the week’ and ‘Rhyme of the week’. We are hoping that your awareness of our stories and rhymes will encourage discussion with you child at home!
If your child is staying for lunch for the first time, we are committed to a healthy eating lifestyle, if you would like any help with this please ask. It would be helpful if you could only put in their lunch boxes what you would like them to eat. Children do struggle with too many choices as they think they should be eating it all. The best lunch boxes for the children are the ‘Bento’ style box. We find the children eat much better with a little bit of choice in each compartment. Please do not give your child anything containing nuts. We always ensure that they eat sandwiches first before any sweet treat, such as a biscuit. Our curriculum encourages health oral care so please only provide them with water and not fruit juice and squash. Obviously, lunch does not need to be a sandwich; pasta, wraps or crackers are very acceptable. We also need you to cut grapes and sausages in half, lengthways please as they are a huge choking hazard. Please all label the lunch boxes and water bottles clearly.
The children love our reward board, and it is beneficial for their self esteem so please continue to use the silver coins to reward your child’s achievements. It can be something quite simple, i.e, saying thank you, using the toilet, eating their dinner, sleeping all night! We read out all the coins and the children congratulate their friends by clapping. To keep it meaningful please don’t write a coin every time they are in, just when they have achieved something. The aunties use gold coins to reward the children whilst they are in setting, and these are read out too. The board, coins and pens are positioned in the porch area.
Photos of the staff that are present each day will also be hanging in the porch window area.
Please can you ensure that you provide the spare clothes and outside wear that we suggested. We have limited all-in-one wet weather suits and boots for these occasions but as you know the children like to get the water everywhere. Please supply named wellies if they have some. Children will need long trousers, a coat and wellie boots for our wood walks. Please can you also check your child for ticks on a regular basis, but we will inform you when wood walks have taken place. If you are at all worried you need to see your GP.
Please don’t forget to label your child’s bag, clothes, water bottles, shoes etc. Some children have the same lunch boxes and when they select their lunch box at lunch time they could end up eating each others lunch! We will provide marker pens if you haven’t yet labelled these. Remember you can purchase labels from ‘My nametags’ quoting our school ID 47700. This helps us with pennies towards our fundraising pot. Please also help us further if you shop online by adding fundraising to you pc.
Don’t forget also for your child to bring in one piece of fruit each week. If every child just brings one piece in, we should have a lovely selection. Just place the fruit in the large bowl on the lunchbox trolley.
Our development plan for this term will be working on ‘Water wall’ area. We would like to have lots of bendy tubes, guttering, funnels etc. If you have any of these types of items at home we would be happy to take them!
We also need to make you aware of EYPP – Early Years Pupil Premium. If your joining household income is less then £16,190 you child may be eligible for funding that we can use to support your child within our setting. Please come and speak to Lynn, Sarah or Sarah for more information.
All nappy changes and accidents will now also be recorded onto the Care Diary in your Tapestry account. You will also be told by a member of staff when you collect your child.
If you are not using your maximum funding hours but intend to do so after Christmas then please come and speak to us now. We are extremely busy and places are tight.
The contact number for Rainbows remains the same. You are welcome to email, text, whatsapp or call. You can ever leave us a message on Tapestry as well. Please come and speak to anyone of us if you have any queries. Please find our business email address and phone number below.
Thank you for you continued support.
Lynn, Sarah, Sarah and The Rainbows team
Rainbows team on: 07915 968011
Email us on: hello@rainbowspreschool.co.uk