Giggles and wiggles, picnics and poppies…

At the start of the academic year you entrusted us with your child. Now they are finishing the year a little bit taller, a little bit wiser and full of learning memories from both home and school. We have shared lots of giggles, some circle time wriggles, and have learnt the importance of sharing with our friends, caring for our animals and looking after the environment around us. We have explored a range of topics from becoming planet-saving superheroes to making art from natural materials, while the Summer Term has seen the children embrace their home learning challenges and Tapestry has been filled with wonderful pictures from home. Thank you for sharing them with us. The year has also seen some wonderful new developments in the Early Years department. We launched parent workshops to offer advice and support on a range of topics and we opened our new Early Years Library, allowing our children and parents to borrow books to share together. Next year, we will be developing a new garden area to enhance our outdoor learning environment and provide our children with even more opportunities to plant and grow their own fruits and vegetables. The highlight of the year though was welcoming the Pre-School children back to school for some very special final few weeks with us. The returning children made extensive use of the outdoor provision on offer at Copthill by searching for dragon tails in the woods, having picnics by the river and picking poppies from the meadows. They flew paper planes, hid under tarpaulins from the rain and cooled off with paddling pool games. The children quickly adapted to new routines and demonstrated just how wonderfully resilient they can be. All of the team agreed that it was lovely to be surrounded by their happy faces again! As we continue to move forward we are very much looking forward to extending the provision to include the return of our Nursery children. As part of the ongoing development of the Early Years department we wish to provide more opportunities and flexibility for our children, including further term time and holiday club provision. We are also delighted to be putting plans in place for our Nursery children to attend Forest School. This will be provided through a more integrated Nursery and Pre School approach. These positive developments will sadly lead to some changes in staffing and we are very sad to be saying farewell over the summer to Mrs Forman who has taken a number of differing roles over 15 years here, but most importantly with all our Nursery children, whom she has looked after so well. Also Mrs Nelson, who will be leaving after 4 years of excellent part time care for our children. We are extremely grateful for their wonderful work and wish them both the very best on their new exciting plans for the future. Finally, as we get ready to welcome lots of new families to the Early Years department in September, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our current parents, staff and children for all of the support which has been offered during these exceptional times. For those of you that are moving on from Early Years, I wish you all well. For those that are continuing with us we can look forward to another exciting, but hopefully less unpredictable, year in the department. Wishing you all a happy and healthy summer break.