Welcome to all our new families and welcome back to our returning families. We have 10 new starters this term; we hope that you all have a very happy time with us at St. Andrew’s. Over the first few weeks of this half term, our photo board will be updated and displayed to help you all get to know our Pre-school families. However, it would be good if you could introduce yourselves to each other when you drop off or collect your child before then.
I am also delighted to welcome our two lovely new members of staff, Emma and Sarah. We are delighted that they have joined our outstanding setting and we hope that they are very happy with us at St. Andrew’s.
At the start of each half term you will receive a newsletter full of useful information to help you prepare for the following weeks. You will also receive weekly newsletters from me with photos of the brilliant activities and events that your children have taken part in.
A reminder for returning families and information for our new families:
We have 5 Key People who are responsible for individual support, care and assessment of progress.
Our Key People are – Emma Dawes, Katarzyna Ouadahi, Jo-Anne Stobbart, Caro Brunner and Sarah Chambers.
A reminder about our new ‘Focus Child’ approach to observing and assessing – Each week we have three or four focus children. When your child is one of our focus children, we ask you to contribute information about your child, along with a few photographs. Each child is a focus child once per term, three times a year, thus resulting in parents having the opportunity to contribute and consult with us in a structured way each term. During each child’s focus week they will noticeably have more observations in their journals on which quality interactions and learning experiences are recorded.
Tapestry – If you are one of our new families, you will receive information regarding setting up your account for Tapestry during the first week back. If you are interested in finding out a bit more about ‘Tapestry’, there are several useful online tutorials.
Information – Please do check our website from time to time to keep you up to date with changes to important documents such as the Pre-school Policies, the Welcome Book and details and dates of future events. We also send out notification of events and news by email, as well as giving out essential information at the beginning and end of each session. If you miss these notices at the start of the session, our parent Facebook page will also repeat any important notices.
Finally, please remember that staff and Committee have your children’s best interests at heart, so if you ever have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to talk to any of us at any time. I always like to remind families that communication with us is extremely important!
Hilary Coome