From the outset when Bringing Up Baby was first set up, we have always believed in good quality, affordable child care.

In order to help parents further with their childcare costs we are introducing our “January Sale “. For a limited period only, we will be not be charging a deposit and will only require a one-off payment which is non-refundable of £50.00 in place of the deposit.

The registration fee will still remain at £30.00 but now the costs of taking up a place at the nursery have been significantly reduced.

For further details or to arrange a visit to the nursery please contact our experienced nursery manager: Melissa Lewis on 020 8746 1015 or email email hidden; JavaScript is required

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you for my welcome as Manager. It has been brilliant, and I am sure we will continue to work in partnership with each other to provide a high level of care.

We also want to congratulate:

Ewa on gaining her NVQ Level II qualification
Ripa on gaining her NVQ Level III qualification

We are always keen to train and develop our staff further and so our staff have recently undertaken the following:

First Aid: Melissa, Kad, Jackie, Ripa, Michelle O
Basic Food Hygiene: Melissa, Niguel
Health & Safety: Melissa
Safer Recruitment: Melissa

The whole staff team also attended a planning and observation evening with a curriculum development officer, Carlene from Hammersmith and Fulham. Carlene has also spent time in the nursery following up on this with staff.

The staff team will all undergo Safeguarding training at the end of October at one of our other nurseries.

New Activities:

We are very pleased to say we have now introduced French to the nursery. Sidy, from ‘Ooh La La’, attends the nursery every Friday afternoon 2-3pm.

We also have Poala from Yoga Bugs in the nursery on Tuesday morning for an hour (10 week course at £45).

New Menus:

We have recently reviewed our menus and have now put together a 6 week menu. We added in more multi-cultural meals and also removed some meals that were not so popular with the children.

Parents Communication Board:

We have recently started a parents’ communication board which is situated in the foyer. The board has been posted for you to have your say…it could be a thought, or suggestion, or maybe something you did at home on the weekend, feel free to share these with us and maybe we could do it too.

Upcoming Dates for the Diary:

Parents Evening: Thursday 3rd November 6.30 – 8pm
Children’s Christmas Party: Thursday 15th December 2.30 – 5pm
Children’s Christmas Lunch: Tuesday 20th December

We would also like to welcome our new friends, James, Mia, Dilan, Sophie, Johnny, Alexander, Oscar, Ellie, Margaux and Hannah.

At Richford Street we had a red day on 14th February, we had lots of red activities and many of us wore red!

We celebrated Chinese New Year, we made lanterns and a Chinese dragon and had stir fry and fortune cookies for our lunch!

The 3-5’s are looking at space, the yoga teacher told us a story about space and we acted it out !

On Wednesday’s we have our sports sessions – we have great fun and get fit!

Our March topic is people who help us so the children may tell you about the emergency services as we are hoping they are going to visit us, please watch out for dates of visits.

If the children would like to bring in anything they would like to share please bring it in and tell your key person and we can do so during circle time.

Easter Closures

14^th April @ 6.15pm – 26^th April @ 8.00am

Events

• 28^th April 2011 – Princess & Prince Tea Party
• 11^th May 2011 –  6.00pm – 7.00pm Open evening
• 27^th May 2011 –  8.00am – 09.30 am Family breakfast

Melissa our senior in 2-3’s room is busy putting up new labels and pictures around the room to define the key areas, such as the book corner and home corner. The 3-5’s are still waiting for their home corner to be delivered and then their old one can go out in the garden.

We have Sports Day coming up in the beginning of August and we are having a Country & Western theme this year. Do look out for the photos they should be worth a browse!

The garden is going to get a bit more attention over the coming weeks and months as we are going to be doing a lot more planting and even more weeding! The over twos have some flower seed trays and we are going to decorate some clay pots and troughs to go along the outside wall.

The 3-5s will be getting a new home corner set and to prepare for it the children have been doing activities around their home environment including family portraits which have given us some interesting results. The children have also received a camera as part of our ECAT scheme so they can photograph and record the things that interest them.

Our Parent Activity Boards are up and we have had some of the suggestion cards returned which are currently displayed on the board. Please do keep them coming as they are great for informing the staff about the things your child does at home.

In May we are going to have another ‘Pyjama Day’ as the last one was so popular and we have had many requests for a repeat. We will be raising money for the Brain Injury Unit which helps rehabilitate people who have suffered a brain injury.

Watch out for signs and posters for more details.

In October we had a Pyjama Day to raise funds for Head Injuries and Rehabilitation Care. All the children and staff wore their pyjamas and slippers for the day and so far we have raised £280.00, and there is still some more sponsors to collect from. It went so well, that I think we will be having more pyjama days in the future as many parents really appreciated not having to dress their children for nursery!

Our next big event is the ‘Open Evening’ for the parents in the Over Two’s, where parents can examine the range of activities available to their children and meet with the staff team.  So far this has generated a lot of interest, particularly from parents in baby room whose children will soon be ready to make the transition into Over Two’s.

As the rooms have been redecorated we have changed the layout to highlight the particular areas of learning. We have also decided to have a special Parents Evening in late September to showcase the Over Twos’ room and invite parents from Baby Room as well as those parents who already have children in the Over Twos.

The purpose is to give parents an opportunity to explore the room as their child sees it; each member of staff will focus on a different area of the room and explain how it supports the children’s learning and how we can track their progress and prepare them for school. They will also be able to offer practical suggestions for activities that parents can do at home to share and reinforce the whole learning experience.

We recently held our annual sports day at Ravenscourt Park. It was a resounding success and enjoyed by everyone, even the weather held out which is a feat in itself. Look on the photo gallery for some hilarious sports day photos. The Fathers’ event in particular gives new meaning to the term ’Sore Losers’!

Michelle, our Deputy in 3-5’s, entertained everyone young and old alike by dressing up in her home made duck costume and waddling around handing out food and drinks. As a staff team we pushed our culinary skills to new heights by baking and decorating our own BUB duck cakes with some interesting results. The children helped to make and decorate cup cakes which they had for tea.

During the day there were lots of fun activities such as ‘Lucky duck dip’ where the children could catch a floating duck and exchange it for a prize. We also had entertainers performing a puppet show, face painting and balloon modelling. Our under twos had fun romping around in the baby ball pond and bouncy castle.
We were very fortunate to have Sue Woodford, Company Director as our VIP guest, who pitched in to help with the baby room tea and blew out the candles on the birthday cake.

We ended the day with a little BUB birthday present for every child to take home. For the adults we had a raffle with the top prize being a free tennis lesson donated by one of our baby room parents. It was a messy noisy afternoon but most importantly it was fun and everyone went home happy.

You can see pictures from the Richford Street party by downloading this PDF.

Michelle our Deputy had a ‘swap day’ with Naina the deputy from Kentish Town. Both of them enjoyed their exchange and are happy to do it again. It gave them a chance to see how another setting with different layout operates and exchange ideas and give feedback.

Baby room are really getting into the whole body experience by exploring large trays full of paint, water, sand, corn flour and cooked pasta, needless to say a lot of the activity ends up in their tummies.

At circle time we are having great fun learning nursery rhymes in different languages; we have French, Italian and Danish so far and now need to include Polish and Dutch.

ADDIOS AMIGOS!