Thank you for choosing Sandcastles for your child. We hope you and your child enjoy nursery. Thanks to all the families who completed our feedback questionnaires this summer - here are our continuous improvement plans for the coming year.
Review of 2013-2014 (year 23)
2013-2014 was a very busy year for Sandcastles with lots of changes:
- We’ve revamped our toilet facilities.
- Rebecca & Janet have joined our team.
- We were visited by Environmental Health Officers and awarded 5/5 for the 3rd visit in a row!
- We completed our final Lancashire Quality Award modules.
- We were invited by the Local Authority to increase our capacity. We are now in the process of slowly adjusting to our new size.
- We re-registered with Ofsted keeping them informed of all our changes.
- We have trained our team to use the WellComm language and communication programme.
- Using WellComm we have screened all 63 children attending Sandcastles this year. We have supported and monitored 24 of these children repeatedly during the year. We end this year with 54/63 children achieving age appropriate language skills or higher and 9 children being supported through targeted activities.
Historical website 'News Feed' 2013-2014
Aug 2014: Happy Mount Park is inviting local people to comment on their 'draft master plan' 30 Aug 2-4pm Putting Green Happy Mount Park
July 2014: Loving the sunshine! Please remember 'Kids Cook Quick' http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/Pages/safety-in-the-sun.aspx#close
June 2014: Janet has now joined our team or Nursery Practitioners.
May 2014: Environmental Health visited us unannounced and rated us as 5/5 for the 3rd inspection running.
April 2014: Sandcastles is growing! We are looking for a new colleague: Part-time Qualified Early Years Practitioner Vacancy
March 2014: Lancashire is offering more families free nursery sessions. Ask Helen for more details / see our 'for parents' tab to check your eligibility.
Feb 2014: Harvey is bringing his Dental Health Roadshow to Sandcastles again. Parents, children and friends all welcome 11:15am Fri 28th Feb 14
Jan 2014: We are making great progress with our toilet renovations, we hope to have all work complete by Feb half term.
Dec 2013: We've been fascinated watching the storms and waves.
Nov 2013: Rebecca has joined our team of Nursery Practitioners.
Oct 2013: Ed Balls visited Sandcastles to talk to parents http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/local/video-ed-balls-visits-morecambe-nursery-1-6181024
Sandcastles Development Priorities 2014-2015 (year 24)
Looking ahead, Sandcastles new priorities and outstanding ‘to-dos’ for 2014-2015:
* Our first priority every day is to ensure children are happy at Sandcastles.
* We want to help each child achieve their potential over the coming year. We believe that parents are the biggest influencers of their children – as such we want to work with you to help children make lots of progress.
* We will continue to use ‘WellComm’ screening & support process to ensure we review all children's developing language skills.
* We will offer parents & carers opportunities to join Nursery events and activities. (We have planned a Letters and Sounds session for October 2014 and a Maths/Mark-Making event for Jan 2015)
* We will continue to share our ‘book & activity bags’ with families.
* We will create some new ‘activity bags’ focusing on prewriting & maths skills.
* We will offer children more opportunities to develop their Maths skills during their preschool year.
* Our Nursery Practitioners will continue to keep their skills up to date by attending coaching sessions, external training, using computer based learning, reading professional articles and blogs.
* We will further improve our facilities with new flooring in messy room and if our budget allows also in our dining area.