Welcome to the Nursery at
St Margaret’s School for Girls
We are delighted that you have chosen the nursery at St Margaret’s School for your child’s nursery education. The following information is intended as a guide for new parents and children who will shortly be joining the nursery.
OUR AIMS
- To provide a positive, safe, welcoming environment for children to play, learn and develop.
- To work in partnership with parents and encourage communication between home and nursery to enhance each child’s learning experience.
- To provide a broad and balanced curriculum in a stimulating environment where children learn through child-led play and active exploration
- To treat every child equally and to encourage independence, taking responsibility and ownership of their learning.
- To involve all staff in the planning and implementing of the Curriculum for Excellence, listen to and value their contributions and provide opportunities, internally and externally, for professional learning.
- To use self-evaluation to maintain continuous self-improvement, for example through discussion, observation, development plans and review.
Sessions/Times
The nursery hours operate from 8.30am to 12 noon (1 session) or 8.30am to 3pm (2 sessions). In the morning please enter via the main front door (buzzer entry) or through the blue side door (junior entrance). There is a security lock on the blue side door. Parents will be notified of the security number on the first day of term.
When collecting your child at lunchtime, collection time is between 11.50 and 12pm. If your child attends for the full day, collection time is between 2.45pm and 3pm. Parents are asked to come in through the main school door and collect their child from nursery. All children must be collected by 3pm if they are not staying for after school care.
Pre and After School Care
Morning care is available for working parents from 8am to 8.30am and after school care from 3pm to 5.30pm. These are charged separately and need to be pre-booked. If you wish to take advantage of these services, please complete and return the enclosed forms. We accept care vouchers. Please speak to your employers for information about these.
Partnership with Parents
We aim to keep you informed of events through daily contact. Details about the learning programme and relevant events are displayed on the class notice board in the cloakroom area for your information.
Daily contact - a member of staff is available every morning and at collection time to answer questions or give feedback about your child. There is a notice board in the cloakroom area which provides information about the daily events and the learning programme in the nursery for parents to read and share with their child. The weekly snack and lunch menus are also displayed here. Parents are welcome to request a meeting with the nursery manager if they wish to discuss a private matter.
Letters - parents are informed of events through newsletters. These letters are placed in your child's pocket above their peg. We also provide a newsletter to share the learning experiences during the term.
Reports - A nursery report of your child's progress is given out in June. This contains information about your child's development in numeracy, literacy, health and wellbeing and learning across the curriculum and includes the next steps for their learning.
Parent appointments – These are held twice a year to discuss your child’s progress.
Stay and play - Parents are invited into nursery to a choice of 'stay and play' sessions throughout the year, to participate in a variety of learning experiences.
Parent helpers - we welcome parents to share their knowledge or skills with the nursery or help with outings and events.
Curriculum
We provide active learning opportunities in our well-resourced nursery and outdoor area. We promote learning through planned and spontaneous play to encourage imagination, creativity, exploration and problem solving. The children’s interests lead and develop our planning. A record of each child’s learning experiences is kept in their own individual learning journey. These develop over the year and we are keen for the children to share these with their parents. The children have the opportunity to participate in timetabled music and gym sessions with specialist teachers twice weekly. Pre-school children have the opportunity to take part in dancing lessons on a weekly basis with a specialist.
Outdoor learning
We encourage active learning outdoors in our safe and enclosed outdoor area.
We regularly visit areas of the local community to learn about the world around us. We participate in Wee Green Spaces initiative at Bon Accord Terrace gardens, which increases physical activity, greater knowledge about nature and positive attitudes towards caring for the environment.
Links to the community
We are lucky to have such an interesting local environment around the school and we often take small groups of children to the local shops to buy snack or baking ingredients. We have visited a variety of local businesses including: the opticians, shoe shops, fish monger, local supermarkets, construction site, Rubislaw Gardens, the post office, dental practice and Ferryhill library as part of learning about the world around us. We also invite experts into the nursery such as the SSPCA, the Critter Keeper and the Child Smile Practitioner.
General Information about the nursery
Uniform
Nursery uniform can be purchased from Kikin’ Klothes every Thursday from 3pm to 5pm in the General Purpose room. Please see for further information.
The nursery will provide each child with a bag at the start of term. Please supply at least one set of spare clothes to be kept on your child’s peg in the bag provided. The children wear their nursery uniform every day.
Please can all children wear velcro trainers for nursery and provide suitable outdoor clothing and footwear, such as a warm, waterproof jacket, hat, scarf, gloves and welly boots, for all types of weather.
To develop independence skills, clothes and shoes provided should be child appropriate.
Naming
Please ensure that all items of clothing, lunchboxes and water bottles are named. It can be very difficult to track items of uniform if they are not labelled.
Food
We operate a healthy eating policy at the Nursery. A snack is provided mid-morning. Please be sure to tell us about individual circumstances with diet. We also offer hot school lunches Monday to Friday. Lunches must be ordered in advance for the whole term.
If you are supplying a packed lunch, please do not include sweets or fizzy drinks. We suggest you place an ice pack in packed lunch boxes to keep the contents cool. Could you please provide any spoons or forks required by the children as we encourage them to be as independent as possible when eating their lunch. No nut products should be included in children’s packed lunches due to nut allergies. Due to choking hazards, grapes must be cut in half length-ways. Due to the strict health and hygiene regulations, we cannot accept any donations for the children’s snack e.g. a birthday cake, unless shop bought.
Birthdays
We enjoy celebrating your child’s special day in nursery and we are happy for you to provide a shop bought cake. Please advise the nursery manager, in advance, if you would like to bring a cake for the children to share.
We operate a voluntary Birthday Book scheme. On your child’s birthday he or she can donate a book to the class library. Please speak to a member of staff if you need any guidance. A certificate bearing your child’s name and birth date will be placed inside the front cover. The children thoroughly enjoy having their birthday book read to their friends.
Lending Library
Once a week, children and parents can choose a book to borrow and read at home from our lending library. These books have all been donated by parents, past and present and offer a selection of stories for you to enjoy at home together.
We are always very happy to receive donations to extend our range of books.
Illness, absence and contact details
In the event of absence please notify the school office. Please notify the nursery manager of any case of infectious disease as soon as possible. If your child has been suffering from sickness or diarrhoea, it is the policy that the child should not return to nursery for 48 hours after the last episode to prevent the spread of infection. Prior to taking holidays during term time, parents are required to put their request in writing to the nursery manager.
If there are any changes in contact details or personal circumstances, please inform the nursery manager and school office at the earliest opportunity.
Nursery funding
Nursery funding is available from Aberdeen City Council for children who attend the nursery for more than 3 sessions per week. For further details please contact the admissions officer or the bursar.
Parking
There is strictly no parking in the school grounds during school hours when dropping off or collecting your child. Please use nearby street parking.
Policies and Procedures
The nursery policies are available in the nursery corridor. A policy of the month is displayed on our notice board. Please provide us with feedback on our policies as we are continually looking to improve and develop them.
Comments, complaints and concerns
We aim to provide a happy and stimulating environment for the development of your child’s learning and play. We have comment forms available in the nursery corridor. Our complaints policy sets out a procedure for parents and carers to raise concerns about any aspect of the service. We endeavour to resolve concerns at an early stage. It is in the best interests of parents, carers, children and staff that complaints are dealt with fairly and confidentially. During the nursery year we ask for feedback from parents regarding a variety of activities to enable us to develop our service.
The nursery team is looking forward to welcoming you and your child, and we hope you have a very enjoyable time with us. In the meantime, if you have any further questions, please contact our admissions office on 01224 595188.
Miss Minett
Nursery Manager
17 Albyn Place, ABERDEEN, AB10 1RU
Tel – 01224-584466 Fax – 01224-585600
St Margaret's School for Girls is a registered charity with OSCR (reg. No. SC 016265)