We will continue to welcome Paddington to playgroup. Your child will have a turn to take Paddington home and can record his stay at your house in an accompanying scrapbook. A simple recount of a family activity, maybe a photograph and/or a drawing is perfect. We look forward to finding out what fun you have at home!

For more pictures go to our NEW bear’s adventures page, click here

Pancake Day falls on Tuesday 4th March and we are hoping to host a Porridge Morning on Monday 10th March as part of a Banes Big Breakfast initiative to promote the importance of a healthy and nutritious breakfast. More details will follow…

We are looking forward to a visit from the Little Zoo on Wednesday 24th March. They will be with us for about an hour and will bring animals such as a barn owl, a meercat, a skunk, an armadillo, and a snake for the children to meet. We would be grateful for any extra help on this day for the hour that they are here (10.15-11.15). Thank you for all of you who helped to raise money for this visit from the last coffee morning. It should be an exciting morning.

Update

Everyone enjoyed our visit from Little Zoo, meeting the animals and learning about them and their environments, Thanks to the Little Zoo team!

We met, Cepen the African Pygmy Hedgehog, Dillis the 3 banded Armadillo, Surgess the Meercat, Al Barny the Barn Owl, and Elvis the Skunk!’

Its a great chance to have a look round the school, meet teachers, and ask any questions you may have.

In addition, Mrs Kirby is visiting the pre school children at the playgroup on the 18th June from 9.30 onwards.

If this is your first time through the school admissions process, applications for September 2015, are usually submitted from October ’14, with a closing date, by the end of January 2015. (TBC)

The best place to look is on the BANES website, where there are links to information booklets, to help answer all questions. Click here .

We will also be carrying on with our special learning sessions for our pre-school children to help prepare them for starting school. These will be short sessions and will focus on letters and sounds involving stories, singing, rhymes and games. We will also practice things like putting on shoes and coats and the all important ‘sitting still on the carpet. Jill and I recently met with the reception teacher at Bathampton Primary School to discuss next year’s intake. We know you have not heard yet about school allocations but we have arranged to take the children who get a place at Bathampton down for a visit at some point later in the term in small groups. If you have any questions about this please ask. For Bathampton Primary School website, Click here.

One of our outdoor projects is to create a new learning area for the children at the top corner of the village hall garden.

We are having a volunteer garden day on Sunday 13th July from 12:30pm to clear the overgrown area, to see what space we have to play with!

Experienced tree surgeon, James Nash, will be advising us and I’ll be bringing a shredder, which will hopefully minimise some of the waste.

If you can get away from the little ones, even for half an hour, all help would be great and very much appreciated!!

Bring your garden gloves, secateurs, pruning saws, spades, forks, rakes, green bins and lots of community spirit !

Update

During term 6 we were successful in receiving a grant from the Big Lottery Fund to improve the outdoor space at the Village Hall, the work has been done over the holidays, we have new steps, fences, paving areas and an area of artificial grass!!, it all looks great! we have more ideas to follow to improve it further! Thank you to everyone involved in the transformation!

We also hope to take the children in small groups up to the dry arch to have a walk around and to do some bark rubbings and maybe some planting and to have a story there in their recycled house. We then plan to get the children involved in making a map of their walk there and also building some interesting things of their own out of junk modelling.

Update

On Tuesday the children and staff at playgroup and a few parent helpers thoroughly enjoyed their trip to the Dry Arch. The children were told a little bit about the Dry Arch Community Growers and then set off to explore the place in little groups. They were able to water the vegetables, pick and smell and feel the different herbs growing in the rockery, meet and feed the pigs (we tried to think of names for the piglets and the most popular choices were Peppa and George!), and they also did bark rubbing. After a good explore the children enjoyed a story and a well earned drink of the Dry Arches very own apple juice. This went down well!

The children all seemed to enjoy themselves as did the staff so we will be visiting again soon.

Paul Hurley Lead Coach with Rugby Tots, Bath will be leading our fun sports day event this year, In the field opposite Playgroup, we are extremely grateful for his offer, should be lots of fun! Details to follow! To find out more about Rugby Tots go to www.rugbytots.co.uk

Update

On a hot summers day in the last week of term the children at Bathampton Playgroup enjoyed their annual Sports Day which was very kindly run by Paul Hurley of Rugby Tots. An audience made up of parents and one Ofsted Inspector watched as the children took part in a number of team activities. After a warm up they ran, jumped, weaved and balanced their way around the playing field cheered on by staff and parents. The children thoroughly enjoyed their sports day and Paul was a great hit with them. Thank you so much to him for running it for us. We are looking forward to his next visit.

Playgroup was paid a visit from the Ofsted inspector during the last week of term and we are very happy to say that we have been awarded a good rating which is a grade up from our last inspection. This is down to the hard work and dedication from staff, committee and parents both past and present. One area we scored highly on was “having a strong parent partnership” so thank you to all those who have helped out and volunteered and thank you to anyone who was quizzed by the inspector on the day. The full report can be viewed here, click on the lastest report.

Our Christmas party will take place on Saturday 13th December this year. There will be lots of fun activities for the children to take part in.

Donations of toys and books for our toy sale are much appreciated. We will be asking for these donations nearer the time.

Update

A big big thank you to everyone involved in the Christmas party, from the organising, helping out on the day, all the donations, and everyone who came along with their families and spent money!!

We raised about £250!, so we have met our target for a mobile cloakroom unit, this will help staff a great deal, thank you.