Autumn 2023 Highlights

Having said a slightly sad goodbye to our Pre-School leavers at the end of August, we welcomed a fresh intake to the nursery in September and October, with lots of babies joining Explorers and new children joining those moving up in Investigators and Pre-School. This was the first autumn term for the nursery with Jovita leading the team, with Hazel as Deputy Manager and we welcomed new staff too over the next few months. We are now well placed to respond to the ever-increasing demand for childcare, which shows no signs of falling back.

We introduced an ‘Employee of the Month’ poll and invited parents (and staff) to nominate a member of staff whom they felt worthy of rewarding and giving their reasons why. It was lovely to get so much positive feedback from parents and made a huge difference to staff wellbeing at Little Lancing. Staff training was also on our action list this term and one more member of staff started their Level 3 Forest School training courses at Sussex Wildlife, with paediatric first aid training for 18 staff and safeguarding for the whole staff team.

We made the most of the mild weather in early autumn for walks out and about for Investigators and Pre-School spending regular sessions in Forest School, where the new intake explored under wooden logs to discover worms, beetles, slugs and snails. They learnt our Forest School code of conduct and began to develop their foraging skills on scavenger hunts around the Forest School field. This tied in beautifully with the autumn treasure hunt bags that the children took home and brought back filled with autumn leaves and pinecones which were then used in our sensory displays.

The Explorers children had new soft play equipment this term. They were soon crawling all over it and under it, as well as sitting on it and it was a great addition to the resources in the room. The babies clearly love it!

For Hallowe’en we had a spooky week with pumpkins a-plenty, creepy spider webs and lots of super, messy activities. The children had the option to come in dressed up and had lots of fun. We moved from that to thinking more seriously about Remembrance and how we remember people who are no longer with us. All three rooms came together to create a scene for our foyer window featuring poppies, a cross and a soldier. In Pre-School the children drew around one of them to create the outline for the soldier.   

It seemed no time at all that the children were getting geared up for the run-up to Christmas, with Christmas lunches, sponsored Christmas Jumper days to raise funds for Save the Children.  Their sensory displays were filled with Christmas sparkle and objects for them to explore and there were lots of Christmas-themed activities and a Christmas dress-up each day of our last week before Christmas closure. Each child had a gift-wrapped book delivered to nursery for them to take home.

In the midst of all this activity, we had our first-ever OFSTED inspection in November and we were pleased to achieve a 'Good' rating overall. 

We’ve certainly come a long way since opening back in September 2019!