Highgate

February Fun at Highgate!

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Send a Letter to a Friend Day!

At the start of February, the older babies celebrated “Send a Letter to a Friend Day”. They enjoyed drawing pictures for their friends, practicing their fine motor, and hand-eye coordination skills. When choosing the friend they wanted to make a picture for, some of the babies chose their peers who had recently moved up to the Toddler Room. They loved knocking on the door and giving cuddles when it was time to deliver them!

                                                                           

 

 

Toddler Room Workshop

Toddler Room hosted a story-themed workshop for their lovely parents and carers to attend. As World Book Day was approaching, the activities were all based on their favourite books. They dug through oats in the sensory tray to find the story board pictures and re-create their own story, made ‘Elmer’ elephants using milk jugs and tissue paper, and finished off by exploring natural materials to plant their very own beanstalks!

 

                       

 

 

Superhero Sid

The Pre-School children introduced a very special superhero – Superhero Sid! Sid will spend his time going on fun adventures with a different child each weekend. Sid’s backpack is filled with lots of key information from Start Well Sheffield and Change for Life. He gives lots of useful bedtime tips, and shares his favourite banana muffin recipe!

 

                                                                                     

 

Pancake Day

On Pancake Day in Rising Threes, the children helped to make their own playdough creating their very own playdough pancakes. Using the role play pots and pans, the children made big pancakes, small pancakes and even dinosaur shaped pancakes. The children used their imagination to create the pancake of their dreams! As a special afternoon treat, the children had pancakes to eat with a range of yummy toppings to choose from. We discussed how all of the different fruits were grown, and then looked at the fruit packaging to look on our globe and find where the fruit had been delivered from. We had bananas from Costa Rica! The staff also enjoyed creating some delicious looking pancakes from the pancake station on their lunch break too!

                                                                                                    

 

September fun at Highgate

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This month, the babies have enjoyed celebrating ‘International Read a Book’ day and ‘National Teddy Bear’ day. They incorporated the two celebrations by bringing in their favourite teddy bear and favourite story into nursery, which they enjoyed sharing with their friends throughout the day! For lunch, they enjoyed a picnic, alongside their teddy bears!

Rising 3’s celebrated ‘National Fitness Day’ by learning some new exercises! They all enjoyed joining in & burning off lots of energy!

 

Finally, Karrissa was our Employee of the Month for September (as voted for by her colleagues).  Well done Karrissa!

 

 

Highgate’s April Antics

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April started off with our Easter celebrations here at Highgate! The children enjoyed taking part in lots of Easter themed crafts & activities. Rising 3’s used potato mashers with the children to paint & print Easter eggs pictures, we did lots of baking activities, including chocolate Easter nests & chick biscuits. We finished off our celebrations with an Easter Egg hunt in the garden for all children to search for some Easter treats.

In Toddlers, we have been looking after some caterpillars! Once they had made their cocoons we put them into their butterfly net. We then waited patiently for them to develop, talking about what we thought they may turn into. We read our story of the week which was ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ & learnt that they will turn into butterflies. We were very excited when our butterflies came out & enjoyed watching them learning to fly. We fed them some apple & nectar water. When they were strong enough, we went on an adventure to the park to set them free! 🦋🐛🍎

The Pre-School children had so much fun at our Eid party! We danced to traditional music, wore our traditional/party clothes & had a big Eid dinner. ⭐🌙♥️

The staff were also treated to a delicious Eid lunch, thanks to Alisha & Uzma who work in the Pre-School room!

Fun at Highgate in November

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We started November with our Parent’s Evenings; thank you to everyone who attended!

Rising 3’s celebrated Bonfire Night with lots of fun and bright crafts.

The children all celebrated Remembrance Day by decorating and painting poppies. The children in Pre-School made a poppy wreath and walked to the church to lay it.
The children really enjoyed taking part in a homelink activity. They were given a bag to collect Autumn ‘treasures’ and went on adventures with their families finding acorns, leaves and conkers. The children then used their ‘treasures’ at nursery to explore and investigate.

June at Highgate

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We started the month, like the majority of the country, by celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee; children, parents & staff enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea. The children made crowns too, & wrote letters to the Queen, telling her all about their celebrations!



The Babies have enjoyed visits from ‘Rhythm Time’. They made lots of noise to the music using different instruments, & clapped & smiled right through until the end!


Also this month, the Pre-School had the opportunity to meet Albert the hearing dog! The children really enjoyed meeting Albert & finding out lots of information about him & other hearing dogs just like him. Thank you to Sarah and Albert from Hearing Dogs for Deaf People for coming to visit!

January fun at Highgate!

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Toddler Room have enjoyed exploring their ‘All About Me’ loose topic this month. They have been learning about different hair colours, skin colours and facial features, and looked at some different multicultural pictures from around the world. They have used their creative skills and curiosity to create their own people on the craft table, all choosing their own resources independently. They worked as a team to make some playdough and decided to make it pink! They then used the playdough to create different facial features; they counted how many of each feature they needed to put on their face, and tried really hard to put them in the right places! They really enjoyed learning about differences between people – something to be celebrated!



Rising 3’s have been trying out different science experiments this month. They showed high levels of energy and fascination, and as a team they made a rainbow explode! They also blew a balloon up with different ingredients. The children all took part and contributed towards the activity, and predicted what was going to happen before they carried out the experiment!



Meanwhile, in Baby Room, they’ve had lots of fun baking. Once their biscuits were made they showed their concentration skills, as well as their creativity, by decorating them. No baking activity would be complete without a little ‘trying’ of the product of course!!


That’s it for January! We can’t believe it’s 2022 but we look forward to sharing more exciting news from Highgate again soon :)

August 2021 @ Highgate

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In July, we welcomed the Early Years Care and Education bear! Thanks to the amazing fundraising efforts across the Company for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity prior to the first lockdown, we were lucky enough to sponsor one of the ‘little bears’ in the Bears of Sheffield trail. The children have enjoyed finding our bear over the summer and were very proud when they received their certificates!


Toddlers have loved using their senses to explore this month! We enjoyed getting messy in our rainbow bubble foam and talked about what colours we could see! We made some great observations such as “it looks like a rainbow colour” and we decided that it felt soft! We also enjoyed smelling the lovely aroma of the foam. We were all willing to have a go and all had lots of fun exploring!



Rising 3’s had a fantastic time exploring in the woods! The children collected lots of leaves, sticks and pinecones to use in the loose parts and investigation area back at nursery. They then stopped at the park on the way back to nursery and had lots of fun on the equipment!



The children have enjoyed helping to prepare healthy snacks this month too. They used their fine motor skills to have a go at cutting their own bananas, watermelon and strawberries. We were all willing to have a go at this, trying really hard! We also made our own choices about if we would like milk or water to drink to keep us hydrated. We all tried our snack and found our fruit very yummy! Rising 3’s also had lots of fun making their own fresh bread for snack. Each child made their own pattern on the bread roll before we put them in the oven to bake. The best bit was eating them at snack time!

We’re now looking forward to starting the new academic year; we wonder what it will bring…

August at Highgate

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Here at Highgate we’ve had a busy August!  We celebrated Yorkshire Day by creating Yorkshire Rose flags, decorating pictures of a Yorkshire Rose & the children hosted their own mini tea party, enjoying scones with jam & cream.

 

We have revelled in lots of different sensory activities, exploring different textures, smells & tastes.  The babies loved getting messy in the beans & Pre-School relished tasting & exploring different hot & cold foods.

We held our first introductory session of ‘Rhythm Time’ with our Babies & Toddlers.  The children explored sound with a range of instruments & sang into a microphone, which helped with confidence building & self-esteem.

We made the most of the beautiful summer weather with the children partaking in many trips out to the park & surrounding areas.  They enjoyed playing on the swings & slides, & played group games on the grass. We also made frozen yogurt pops to enjoy.

 

We are now looking forward to the start of a new term & lots more exciting experiences during the Autumn & Winter!

’17-’18 End of year review

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However unlikely it may seem to be, we’re suddenly in August drawing the year to a close! Although I usually leave the blogging to others, I’ve decided to proffer this in addition.

Firstly, I’d like to start by congratulating our four fantastic settings and their Managers on what has been an amazing first year to our new and improved Company. We’ve seen an abundance of visitors into nursery, trips out for the children, workshops which lots of our current families will have participated in and enriching extra-curricular events such as Zoolab, Mini Movez and pottery painting. We’ve introduced our Facebook pages which have had a brilliant reception across the board, particularly in terms of keeping parents informed of upcoming occasions and being able to see photos in a timelier fashion. We’ve also, obviously, released our new website with this blog feature!

A year ago, the owner made the decision to employ me as an Area Manager – I am the person who monitors progress in all our branches and provides support to the Managers in all areas of administration, staffing and the general running of the settings. Together, we then decided to employ an overarching Special Educational Needs Coordinator to support the many children we cater for with additional needs – we found Clare Hough who slotted in so perfectly and is now considered invaluable. Next on the agenda in our bid to boost our quality was to find a Quality Practice Manager to spend time in each of the branches evaluating the environments we have on offer and the practice of our staff – Anna Cam came onboard and superseded our hopes and expectations. She does all of what we wanted as well as supporting staff with feedback, targets and tailored training, making her priceless.

We’ve presented a multitude of enriching aspects to how we run our settings over the year – the majority of parents now take advantage of being able to pay their monthly fees by BACS transfer; a termly newsletter is now sent out keeping the information streamlined, more relevant and up to date; ‘Fresh Fruit Friday’ is on offer in each branch on the last Friday of each month providing a tasty, free snack and a great opportunity to model healthy eating choices; a lending library is in operation in each of our settings encouraging children and parents to share literary opportunities together at home; the nursery menus had a huge overhaul which gave the children the chance to experiment with lots of new and exciting dishes that all take into account the recommended nutritional values and portion sizes; we’ve extended our opening hours to 7am-7pm Mon-Fri assisting greatly with many of our working families’ needs; last but by no means least, we’ve undertaken an enormous amount of maintenance and improvements across all four of our branches to ensure the environment is kept to a high standard for each and every one of the children we care for.

There’s been a definite move towards striving for quality and, in that vein, we’ve been making conscious efforts to let our staff know just how valued they are. We’ve introduced Room Coordinators to enable people who’d like to progress in their career with us; several staff incentives to boost morale and keep motivation high have been introduced; and an amazing Christmas celebration which ended 2017 beautifully. Perhaps best of all, July saw the EYCE staff team embark on a ‘seaside jolly’ to Scarborough for the day! The trip was a treat from the owner to thank us all for an extremely successful year and to celebrate a year of the newly branded Company. It was a really lovely day with gorgeous sunshine, beautiful scenery and a relaxing boat trip, all perfectly topped off with an amazing fish and chip lunch!

As I look forward to the new academic year, and more success for Early Years Care and Education Ltd, I’d like to say a huge thank you to all our wonderful employees and to all our existing families for their continued support.

Lisa Mapley – Area Manager

April at Highgate

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During the month of April Highgate has been blessed with a multitude of visitors! We started with Donald and his community engagement ambulance. He talked to the toddlers and Pre-School children about his role and what it entails. They learnt about what an ambulance is for, what it does and how it helps people. The children got to actually sit inside the ambulance and even try out the siren! Possibly their favourite part of the visit was the opportunity to try on the uniform that Donald brought. We ended the session by colouring in some pictures that he’d also supplied.

Zoolab came to bring their exotic wildlife for the children to see. The children were able to handle creatures such as a snake, a giant snail, rats, mice and even a gecko. The Zoolab representative explained to the children where the animals come from, where they live and what they eat. We found the session really encouraged the children to ‘have a go’, even when they weren’t very keen at the beginning!

Last but not least we had our monthly enrichment of ‘Mini Movez’. One of the lovely ladies came to Highgate to lead a fun and expressive session themed around what the children were learning. The sessions are always lively and energetic and the Toddler and Pre-School groups take full advantage of this opportunity for active learning which really gets their hearts pumping!

Aside from visitors, there’s been plenty more exciting things happening within nursery. Our Pre-School children have been learning about life cycles this month and have focussed on frogs. We introduced a tank of real tadpoles & the children explored them using magnifying glasses to examine them. At each stage of development, they’ve made efforts to draw observational portraits.  They are very excited that the tadpoles are now developing legs and are eager to see when they will turn into a frog.

Monday 23rd April saw us celebrating St George’s Day. This date marks the anniversary of the English patron saint’s death. According to legend, he was a soldier in the Roman army who killed a dragon and saved a princess. Rather than re-enacting the legend (!) we decided to mark the day by holding an afternoon tea party. The children made flags using a variety of different art and craft methods such as colouring, sticking and painting. We then used the flags to decorate the table where they ate scones with clotted cream and jam – yummy!

Throughout April our babies have been experimenting with different sensory experiences. We took advantage of the warm weather, stripped the babies down to their nappies and let them explore ‘gloop’, shaving foam, water, cereals, sand and even ice! We focussed on several of the ‘characteristics of effective learning’ with each of these – ‘playing and exploring’, ‘active learning’ and ‘creating and thinking critically’. It was great to observe the different ways they investigated the different mediums and their textures.