Welcome to St Mary's Nursery

The nursery is managed by a non-profit making trust. All our policies and procedures are available to parents to view upon request.

Our provision consists of:

• 8 place baby unit within a 24 place day-care room
• 50 place pre-school operating morning and afternoon sessions

We incorporate a breakfast, after school and holiday club catering for all children aged 5 - 14 years, known as Smarty’s. You are invited to come and have a look around, preferably when the nursery is in action!

Please contact the Nursery Manager on: 01434 608723

---

The Premises

The building dates back over two hundred years and has recently been renovated. In 1958 it became the “Catholic Club”. It has many associations for people locally.

The premises consists of two storeys: the lower floor consists of mainly art, crafts and role-play activities whilst on the upper floor there is a staff room, pre-school room, after-school room, office area and a quiet activity room.

We are on site with St Mary’s RC First School and have strong links with the school’s Early Years co-ordinator.

---

Latest News

Summer 2008

Summer Holidays at St Mary’s is a busy time for everyone involved as the coming and goings of staff, children and their families go off on their annual holidays to recharge their batteries ready for the Autumn term.

The day-care children have not had the best start to the summer programme of activities we usually have on offer due to the unrelenting wet weather, however like true troopers we have all made the best of it and brought the summer indoors! The children have been camping and having barbeques, they have enjoyed theme days such as Under the Sea where everyone helped to make an under water haven full of different sea creatures. One popular day was when the Crocodile came to play... see the photo of some children being very brave and sitting on the croc!!!

The third week of the holidays we have been very busy starting to find out about other cultures and traditions, we have started with France, today the children have had French bread and cheese for snacks, they have explored the texture and smell of garlic and French onions. Both the day-care and holiday club children have looked at and recreated the French Flag and have learnt some French words and their meanings. Next week we will go off to Italy and a whole host of new adventures and activities to do and explore. Hopefully the real sunshine will come out in England for our finale of a Seaside picnic day.

September term for our pre-school class returns for the new term on Tuesday 9th September.

Enjoy the rest of your Summer

April/May 2008

All our children are going to be very busy next week as we are taking part in Paddington Bears 5oth Birthday celebrations to raise money for premature babies and pregnancy related complications.

Our day-care children will be bringing their bear to nursery on his birthday ( Wednesday 25th June) and having a teddy bears picnic to help him celebrate, they will also be taking part in lots of bear activities such as colouring in competitions, making Paddington Bears favourite sandwiches and much much more. There will be prizes given for the winners over the course of the week.

Pre-school children will be attending the giant Picnic in the Park, which takes place on Hexham Sele park, and this years fun and activities will be around Paddington Bear.

Our Breakfast and after school club children are taking part in “guess the member of staff’s bear” each member of the staff team has had their photograph taken with their bear and without the children will have to pay 50p to guess which bear belongs to which member of staff the child who guesses the most correct will be the winner and receive a prize.

Total funds raised will be announced next month along with some photographs of the activities.

March 2008

We have had our new video entry door security system fitted on both floors as part of our ongoing maintenance and security across the nursery.

This was made possible by a grant of £2000 from Sure Start Northumberland.

Febuary 2008

We are holding an open afternoon in pre-school for prospective new starters aged 3 years on Wednesday 19th March in our pre-school room 1pm - 2pm All welcome

Our Topics in nursery this half term are New Life and Growing the children will be learning through play scenarios all about plant life and growing things, new life including baby’s and baby animals. Look out for photographs in our entrance foyers later in the month.

The children are busy making Mother’s Day Cards for Mothering Sunday.

Pre-school children are joining the reception class later this month to participate in a joint activity session within our theme of growing “Jack and the Beanstalk” once again look out for photographs being displayed.

We are busy developing our out door area we have had a number of visits from Richard Wood an outdoor play advisor from County to advise staff on making a digging area using tractor tyres and mud! The children have had a fantastic time digging and making mud pies and enjoying the opportunity to get dirty!

A big thank you to Richard and his colleague for coming along and inspiring us.

January 2008

Happy New Year to all our parents and children. Our pre-school class welcomes our new starters and their families to our setting for their first session in pre-school today.

The children and staff enjoyed many Christmas activities before the holidays, including a visit from Santa himself who came along to the pre-school Christmas Party and handed our presents to all the children, leaving some with staff to hand out to other children who attend our various clubs. The children in day-care and out of school clubs enjoyed a Party Theme week to ensure that those children attending different sessions didn’t miss out on the fun.

We have had a number of our parents give birth before the Christmas break to healthy babies, congratulations and our very best wishes go to you and your new family member.

Health: We have had a number of children absent before the holidays due to sickness related illness, I would therefore please urge all parents to please be aware of the need for strict hygiene practices and to please ensure any child with upset tummy symptoms are kept away from nursery for at least 48 hours after the first symptoms. Bugs of this nature spread quickly amongst vulnerable young children who’s immune systems are still developing, so please follow our advice and keep your child at home, keep them warm and comfortable and offer drinks of water regularly and seek advice from your GP or Health Visitor if you are at all worried about your child. Telephone Nursery to inform staff of your child’s absence.

Let us hope that by following the advice above along with our stringent cleaning practices, that we will minimise the spread of infections as much as possible.

December 2007

Nursery nurse Danielle Batey who left us in November, has had her first baby, a girl Lucy Eve 7lbs both well congratulations to Danielle and partner Carl from everyone at nursery. New staff member Ms Lisa Clark who took over from Danielle has settled in well to nursery life and is getting to know everyone.

The children in nursery are very busy getting ready for Christmas, they are making lots of sparkly things ready to take home to mum and dad who will no doubt treasure such items for many years to come and probably embarrass them well into their teens!!

Pre-school children are going to the pantomime to see Cinderella on Tuesday 4th December, this is a free event funded through the graduate support programme that our pre-school teacher Mrs Gartland is involved in.

We have successfully secured £5000 in funding from the Willan Charity which will go towards developing our pre-school outdoor play area, parents at nursery have also raised over £1000 for this area as well. Richard Woods from Learning Landscapes, funded through the graduate support programme, is coming out on Monday December 3rd to work with the children in pre-school to create a digging area, more news on this next month.

On behalf of the directors, myself and staff here at St Mary’s Nursery we wish all our children and their families a very merry and peaceful Christmas and a happy new year.

November 2007

Member of staff Danielle Batey leaves us this week to have her 1st baby, best wishes from staff, children and parents at nursery.

Ms Lisa Clark joins our team as Danielle’s replacement from Monday 5th November. Lisa is an experienced nursery nurse having worked as a nanny and in nurseries across the country.

The children have been very busy painting Halloween pictures, the out of school club children have had great fun during half term holidays making scary pumpkin’s and making haunted house models from recycled materiel’s.

October 2007

We have just had a new floor laid in our pre-school / out of school room which is the same as our lower flooring and is much more in keeping.

Nursery parents are busy fundraising to support us in developing our outdoor area in pre-school so far funds raised are over £1200 nursery has also paid £450 towards providing natural shelter provided by Willow trees and shrubs which help make the play area more attractive.

We have also been Ofsted inspected two weeks ago we are delighted to say that we have been awarded a Good across all areas in Foundation stage and Birth to three and the five outcomes Being Healthy, Staying Safe, Enjoying and Achieving, Making a Positive Contribution, Achieving Economic wellbeing.

We are extremely delighted with the outcome and that we have had no actions. Full report will be available on the Ofsted website in fifteen days.

We have successfully trained two students in NVQL2 delivered in house by our four trained assessors and myself the Internal Verifier their certificates will be presented soon.

We have a further two students who have started their NVQL3.