Head of School's message
Welcome back to the Summer Term! We hope you all had a lovely break and are ready for a busy and exciting term ahead.
This term is an important one as we begin preparing many of our children for their transition to primary school. With school places being allocated this week, we know this can be an anxious time for families, bringing a mix of excitement and uncertainty. Please do come and speak to us if you have any questions or need support—we are here to help every step of the way.
For our younger children, they are learning the routines of the nursery and making lots of new friends. A very warm welcome to our five new families. We are so pleased to have you join us and look forward to getting to know you all.
We are also looking for families to share their language and culture with the children at our nursery. If you feel you would be able to come and read a story to a group, perhaps sharing a few words from your first language, please do let us know.
As always, we will be making the most of our time together, whatever the weather brings! We are embracing April showers as part of our learning and outdoor play.
Dates coming up:
This half term the children will be paying a visit to the local library - further information to follow.
May Bank Holiday - Monday 4th (Nursery Closed)
May Half Term week commencing Monday 25th May to Friday 29th May (Nursery Closed)
Reminders:
Catch up Calls will resume next week.
Join our nursery's social media pages to stay connected.
Book & Rhyme of the week
The next Structured Stories Book is "Jack and The Beanstalk" by Mara Alperin and Mark Chambers.
Next week the story will move into the imitation phase of Structured Stories, where children will focus on the story structure identifying the beginning, middle and end. This will involve activities such as retelling the story with actions, creating story maps and performing the text aloud. This phase is to provide a solid foundation through understanding and practising the language patterns and structure of the text.
Our key vocabulary of the text is "Poor", "Magic", "Strange", "Beanstalk", "Giant/Giantess" and "Cleaver".
Please see below link to story;
The Rhyme of the week for next week is "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes".
This Rhyme has a Maths focus and explores patterns.
Language of the week
We are lucky to have a rich and diverse community with lots of different languages. Do you speak Turkish or Spanish? Are you available next week on a Wednesday or Thursday? If your answer is YES, then we'd be delighted to have you reading a story in your home language to the children! They love a Secret storyteller! We are flexible with the timing so please speak to us if you can come in another day/time.
Please look out for next week's languages in the newsletter, it might be your home language next!
Learning at home
The Mayor of Dacorum, Cllr Catherine McArevey is delighted to launch a fun competition to name our bin lorries!
From now until Wednesday 22 April, we are inviting children from all primary schools across Dacorum to submit their most creative and fun names for 25 of our bin lorries.
This is a great opportunity to inspire creativity, support environmental awareness, and give pupils a chance to see their idea become part of the community.
How to enter:
• Submit all entries by email: admin@heathlane.herts.sch.uk
• Deadline to enter: Tuesday 21st April.
Healthy me, Healthy world
In our Healthy Me, Healthy World focus on Sustainability, we are learning how small actions can make a big difference to our planet.
Inspired by the book 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World, we have been thinking about simple, everyday choices—like using both sides of our paper. If everyone did this, it would greatly reduce the number of trees needed to make paper, which is especially important as the cost of paper continues to rise. Alongside this, we are developing our mark-making skills through our busy finger sessions, where we practise control and coordination while learning to write our names.
By combining care for our environment with our early writing skills, we are taking our first steps towards becoming responsible and thoughtful global citizens.
Success story of the week
This week in Nursery, we explored the different traditions that our staff and children use to celebrate Easter.
One of our class teachers shared how her family celebrates by dyeing eggs. We looked at photographs of her family decorating eggs, which sparked lots of curiosity and excitement.
We then had the opportunity to try it ourselves. First, the eggs were hard-boiled, and then we carefully dipped them into bowls of food colouring. We waited patiently for the colour to develop before taking the eggs out and leaving them to dry.
The children are very excited to take their eggs home to share with their families—some have even said they might eat them!
We feel very fortunate to be part of such a diverse Nursery, where many different cultural traditions are celebrated. A big thank you to all the parents who have come in to share their own traditions with us. We warmly welcome anyone else who would like to visit or send in photographs showing how they celebrate festivals or cultural events.
