If you have a child aged 3 - 4 years old, up until October 2020 you will be able to receive 30 hours of free childcare and tax-free childcare, even if your income has reduced due to COVID-19.

Did you know here at Country Kids Nursery we have an app called Parent Zone?

On June 1st, hundreds of nurseries re-opened their doors to their much missed children for the first time in 10 weeks which included 2 of our own sites, Kneesall and Newark. We were given just one week to put government measures in place, reach out to our parents and prepare nursery for re-opening. As a high quality childcare provider, our focus was of course to ensure that each child would be as safe as possible on their return to nursery, but also take into account how this could affect them emotionally. I'm sure you will all agree with us here, that it is simply impossible to socially distance from any child under the age of 5. Although they can take in the information and do have some understanding, they do not yet have the capacity to remember to socially distance. The government guidance stated that as a nursery, we must have a small hub of children that stay with the same staff member all week. In addition to this, we were to spend as much time as we could outside and with this guidance, we started to look at what nursery life would look like upon our return. Country Kids are incredibly lucky to have an exceptional group of staff who were willing to help shape our return and were eager to return to work. As our staff members have been having weekly zoom calls with their key children during the lock down period, it allowed our first day to be a little easier on the children as they still had their amazing bond with the staff members. Drop off & Pick ups are one of the biggest changes within nursery. Each parent has a 5 minute time slot where one designated family member can drop off and collect the child for the foreseeable future. Children arrive and depart through the outdoor gates and are met by their key worker. The first day was a little unusual for the children but as the week has gone on, they find it really exciting to go straight into the outside play area! Each hub of children have their own set of toys that are thoroughly cleaned at the end of each day. Following advice, sand play has been restricted so that each hub can play in the sand every couple of days. Country Kids have invested in extra shading at both sites to ensure the children can spend as much time outdoors as possible. Luckily, just before our return both sites had their outside area's revamped so the children had something really exciting to return to! In addition to this, each site has a brand new outside hand washing facility which has been fantastic. It has not only allowed hand washing upon arrival but also frequent hand washing throughout the day even whilst playing outside. An additional member of staff has been brought in at each site to help with cleaning and to cover staff lunch breaks. This staff member is extremely vigilant with hand washing and input will be kept to a minimum. All other external providers such as Caterpillar Music and Tennis have been temporarily put on hold. Usually, we would chat to parents upon collection about their child's day however due to social distancing, we have decided to revert back to an app called i-connect. This allows the parents to receive real-time updates of what their child has been up to throughout the day including sleep times, nappy changes and what they have eaten. All in all, our return to nursery has been extremely successful and we would like to thank our staff members, parents and children for being so fantastic and working with us to ensure our transition back to nursery was a positive experience for our children. Looking for childcare in the Newark area? Check out the rest of our website, enquire about a place though our contact form here , or call us on: Kneesall (A616) - 01623706100 Newark (Lincoln Road) - 01636370822

A simple guide on how to make your own coloured sensory rice for activities!

Question: What is Squiggle While You Wiggle? Squiggle while you wiggle is a fantastic activity to engage children in developing the motions they need to learn in order to prepare them for writing. Squiggle while you wiggle is an activity to kickstart their journey in learning to write by doing circles, semi circles, horizonal lines and the vertical lines they will use to write a letter whilst dancing along to our favourite music. It’s important to remember that children are not expected to write letters and their name until they attend school at the age of 5. At Country Kids, this is something we strongly believe in and the children love when we do Squiggle while you wiggle! We focus on developing their gross and fine motor skills to imitate lines and circles in order to write each letter of the alphabet. You will need: Anything you can wave around in the air! You can do Squiggle while you wiggle anywhere, with anything that can swish around. In nursery, we like to use: Scarves Material Shakers Ribbons Bamboo If you are at home, you could use: Cheerleading style Pom Pom's Ties Long socks Tea towels We like to add some music to our Squiggle while you wiggle, some of our particular favourites in nursery are: Dolly Parton: 9-5 S Club 7: Reach Tina Turner: Proud Mary You can use any of your favourite 60s / 70s / 80s classics. The clue is in the title - they really do squiggle while they wiggle! Now, let's get started! The next part of this activity requires some adult led learning. It really doesn’t matter how silly you may feel, the more you squiggle, wiggle and have fun the more engaged the child will be in this activity. 1. Start by doing some big circles with your arms, you could do 5 one way and then 5 the opposite way. To add some mathematical language, you could talk about clockwise and anticlockwise movements with older children. Then you could do some small circles with your wrists, again both ways. 2. Once you have done circles, you could draw lines reaching all the way to the top, and crouching all the way to the bottom, and touch the floor. These movements can go up and down, or side to side. Again, with older children you can really emphasise going left and right. 3. Next, we like to do some wavy lines, and dance around twirling around in a circle. The children are likely to do these motions to a couple of songs before they get tired or their arms hurt! This activity is so simple but really is effective. We hope you have lots of fun trying Squiggle while you wiggle at home! - The Country Kids Team x

Fine motor skills are something that will begin developing from when your child is a baby. The concept behind fine motor skills is the strengthening of smaller muscles (finger, hand, wrist etc) to prepare them for later in life. These skills are crucial for a child's development, helping them learn how to dress and undress themselves, learn how to write and also improves hand-eye coordination. In nursery there are lots of activities we carry out to help improve a child's fine motor skills. Here are a list of some things you could try at home:

The transition between schools can be nerve-racking for not only the children, but for parents too. Many parents will be preparing their first child for school and will feel a little bit lost and thinking 'What do I need to do?'. Last Thursday, if you applied for your child to start school in September you will have found out if your child was accepted. Hopefully they were, if not you can speak with your child's key worker to receive some advice. At the moment, we are all in COVID-19 lockdown and taking each day as it comes. If we were in nursery, it is around this time we would start adding things in to nursery life to prepare our pre-schoolers for 'big school'. Now, your child will not fully understand what 'big school' means and to process can seem a little daunting. There are a few things we do to ensure your child starts to understand what is to come, so the big day doesn't seem quite so hard. 1) Talk with your child about what school they are going to and what will happen at school. Talk about the journey to school, will you be walking or travelling in the car? You can tell them all about making new friends, just like the ones they have made at Country Kids. Remember to try and use lots of positive words, such as 'Your new friends are going to be wonderful' and 'You are going to have so much fun'. Allow your child to process this information slowly, and give them time to think and ask questions before moving on. 2) Read books to your child about starting school. Children will absorb the information from books like a sponge and you can read them over and over again so your child understands what happens in the books. Ask questions and allow your child time to think and answer the questions about what happens in the book. You can use language such as 'Wow, what an exciting adventure it was starting school. That will be you soon!'. A few books that you may be interested in are: Harry and the Dinosaurs go to School - Ian Whybrow I want my Mummy - Tracey Corderoy I am Too Absolutely Small for school - Lauren Child Starting School - Janet and Allan Ahlberg Never Take a Bear to School - Mark Sperring 3) Set up a school role play area in the house. Usually, we would pick up some spare uniform and place this in our role play area for the children to explore. If you have older siblings that are already in your chosen primary school, you could use these to allow your child to become familiar with their new uniform. Country Kids introduced uniform a few months back which should already ease the change of wearing a school top and jumper. You could play teachers with your child, and use their teddy bears as pupils in their class. Together, you could make a register and make sure all of their teddies are attending class. You could teach your teddies how to make play dough, using our 'This is How: We make play dough' post. This will begin to familiarise your child on what is to come at 'big school'. (Another tip for uniform, when you do get uniform for your child, make sure everything is labelled! This will minimise the risk of losing items of uniform - children have a tendency to take off their jumpers and hide them in secret places. This will cost you a small fortune..!) 4) Promote independence at home. This is really a prime time for you to spend time with your child and allow them to learn how to do things themselves - you have all the time in the world! You can focus on things such as the child undressing and dressing themselves at morning and at night, and putting on their own socks (this is super tricky and might take a good few tries!). Whilst going on your daily walks, allow the child to put their own shoes on and give them time to work out which shoe goes on which foot. Most children will be expected to be fully potty trained by the time they go to school, and should be able to attend to toileting needs themselves. Something that I'm sure you are all experts on now is washing your hands. Your child should be able to wash and dry their own hands without support. This is a great opportunity for you to supervise your child, and show them how to reach all parts of their hands to get rid of the germs. 5) Number and Letter recognition. It's important to remember here that your child does NOT need to be able to write all their letters, numbers and be able to write their name. This is something school will focus on and your child will learn at their own pace. If they are already starting to write some letters, or recognise some numbers, you could try and do a couple of activities at home to improve on this. Read, Write, Inc is something we use in nursery to familiarise the children with letters in their name. For example, to write an 'a' we go around the apple and down the leaf. This is a fun way for your child to learn the letters in their name. Try simple ones first, and remember not to worry about capital letters just yet. There are a few fun ways you can practice writing letters: - Good old pen and paper. You could use a pencil, or let them choose their favourite felt tip - Flour. You can add flour to a plate and let them use their fingers to create letters or numbers. This is great as children love sensory activities and they can just try again and again using the same flour. This could be used with numerous things such as sand or whipped cream (definitely the tastier option). - Pencil control sheets. In nursery, we try to avoid worksheets as much a possible but they are great for the child to concentrate on. You could print some off from the internet or you could make your own dot to dot letters, numbers and swirls for them to copy. Encourage them to hold their pen properly rather than with a full hand grasp. The more practice, the more they will get used to holding the pen this way. - LingoKids. This is an app that you can download on your phone/iPad where the kids can trace the letters. It then follows this by using language such as 'c, c is for cat!'. We really hope that these tips help and if you have any more questions or are struggling, please contact your key workers who are more than happy to help. Stay safe everybody! - The Country Kids Team

This is how we make puffy paint at Country Kids Nursery

This is how we made cloud dough at Country Kids nursery