The nurseries have been busy, out and about in the community and enjoying trips to the farm, zoo, museums & festivals and the nurseries will continue to do so over the coming months. Each room will continue with their own topic of choice in addition to this. Your room seniors will provide you with more information on any outings planned over the weeks ahead.

It will be a very emotional time for us over the next month or two when 32 children will be leaving the nurseries to go to school some of which have been with us since they are 6 months old. Please bear with us over the next few months it is a very busy time for us in the office preparing for new arrivals and departing children and trying to co-ordinate all this is quite a task!! If your child is leaving and you have not provided us with leaving dates can you please do so as soon as possible.

The Kirkliston nursery has seen a revamp of our nursery garden in Kirkliston with our new Astro Turf area which is proving a big hit with the children. Many thanks to our Parent Committee and Parents who kindly donated £500 towards the cost of this. This area is still being developed and we will continue to add new resources over the coming months.

In Dalmeny our new outdoor class room is up and running and the children have been instrumental in providing us with ideas of what they wanted to see in the classroom. We have decided to call it “The Barn”. If you have not had a chance pop in and take a look we love it!

We are in the process of applying for planning permission to add on a small extension to our building in Dalmeny to the side of our toddler room. This will allow us to expand our numbers and assist in reducing our very long waiting list! We are awaiting approval on the plans by our landlord and should have them back soon. It will then simply be a matter of time awaiting approval of planning permission so fingers crossed!

We hope you like our new developments!

As per our email sent out in April we were delighted with our Care Inspectorate report. The inspector spent two days in the nursery and had a chance to meet with not only the children but staff and some parents to hear your views. She was very pleased with the nursery its developments and the management and leadership of the nursery. We were awarded Level 5 grades across all areas which is extremely good. A big thank you to you all for helping us make this a great nursery and to our staff who work very hard at ensuring we meet these standards.

We have introduced a new parent area on the page. Here you will find newsletters, news on general events or celebrations and we will also be introducing the room planners so you can see what the children are doing at nursery on a weekly basis. We will continue to add to this page anything that we think will be of interest to you.

Please log in and take a look your feed back would be very useful;

www.nippersnursery.com/parents

Parent Area Password is: n1ppers

Staff have been busy attending training over the last few months we would like to congratulate the following on completion of:

Counting in Context – Fiona Venelle, Hannah Sneddon
Mindfulness in Early Years – Ashleigh Fleming
Magic of Music – Lauren Houston, Ashleigh Fleming
Taking a Closer Look at 2 year olds – Lauren Houston, Charlie McQueen
Introduction to Creativity – Megan Beveridge, Nicole Oliver
Managing Child Protection – Asheligh Fleming
Child Protection Level 2 – Frankie McAllister, Robyn King
Curriculum for Excellence – Hannah Sneddon
BTA Support Active Learning – Caitlyn Gordon, Natalie Main

We would like to congratulate Frankie McAllistair who gained her qualification in SVQ 3 Early Years and Childcare last month. She has shown great commitment to her training and we are delighted that she will be staying on with us as a fully qualified practitioner in our Kirkliston nursery.

I would like to welcome the following members of staff:

Megan Beveridge – Qualified Practitioner in Dalmeny
Shannon Kane – Qualified Practitioner In Kirkliston

Please note Amanda Barton is now on maternity leave.

Wendy Mart will be taking up a position as Assistant Manager in June. Wendy will spend her time equally across both nurseries assisting both Janice and Tracy in their busy roles as managers.

We have had to make a few tweaks in our staffing due to holidays, mix of experience and working hours: