A HUGE welcome to our new Little Bears and their families who joined us this term. Our newest Little Bears have been very well looked after by our Big Bears as they have settled into RTG life. We are blown away by children’s compassion in caring for those younger than them this year, it has been so special to witness. So many pom poms for kindness!
I would like to thank you all for helping us to celebrate Christmas last term at RTG.
We had a fabulous time singing carols and making wreaths with older members of EMC's congregation. It was lovely that some parents were able to join us at our intergenerational workshops, we have more dates in the diary coming this year too. The Welcome Club meet on Thursday afternoons so all intergenerational sessions will be during this time, if your child does not attend the session you are of course still very welcome to come along and join us.
We were super proud of how well all children performed at EMC's Under 5's Nativity in December. Everyone had lots of fun practicing songs and actions with Mr Morris and shone likes stars on the day, with their brilliantly loud and proud singing voices.
We ended the term with a very well deserved party with crafts, games, dancing and a visit from Father Christmas himself. It was lovely that you could all make it to join us.
Epsom Methodist Church is a great place to be during the Christmas period. We feel super lucky to be a part of EMC’s magical Christmas celebrations each year.
✏️Projects ✏️
At RTG, children lead the learning. Our child led curriculum ensures that their thoughts, interests and fascinations are the forefront of everything we do. We are all taken on a journey of wonder and learning each year.
Last term, children were particularly interested in cooking. We enjoyed creating many delicious recipes to take home to share with our families. We created our very own pizzeria, making pizzas from scratch, choosing toppings and designing pizza boxes.
A drop in temperatures inspired an interest in frost and ice. We talked lots about different animals and how they stay warm in the winter. We are looking forward to Mr T coming out of hibernation. We tried various methods to melt ice and discovered through trial and error that salty warm water was the best solution as we rescued animals trapped in ice bergs.
Halloween brought pumpkin exploration, scooping, baking and counting seeds. We talked lots about spiders and the webs they create. We used our fine motor skills to navigate through webs to collect small objects with tweezers.
Diwali and bonfire night gave us opportunities to explore fire safety and enjoy toasting marshmallows too. We created colourful firework pictures, thinking about the ones we had been seeing in the sky. We tried painting on a variety of materials and are now dab hands at mixing primary, black and white to create the colours we like best.
At dance club, we used colourful scarves and music and movement to whizz, whoosh and bang like fireworks.
We have lots of budding firefighters and police officers at RTG so are always using our outdoor equipment for training. We decided to take our heroes a well deserved gift for keeping us safe one lunch club and what a treat we had in return. The police showed us all of their equipment and let us have a drive of their car, we even got to sound the siren. We eagerly accepted an invite into the fire station. We were completely star struck! We got to look all around and even go in a real fire engine. We could not believe our luck when we got to shoot water from the hoses, best day ever!
This term, we are very interested in building and constructing. We are currently trying out various construction materials to create planned effects.
We have also had a marriage proposal from a Little Bear to a Big Bear. We have been thinking lots about friendship and how our actions can make each other feel. The proposal has inspired us to hold a ‘bestest friends’ ceremony. We have invitations to write, music to choose, flowers to create and a cake to bake too as we head towards Valentines day. We would be very grateful for any donations of unused postal stamps before 7th February.
We enjoy lots of books every day in our book corner and during our story time sessions. So far this term, we are particularly enjoying stories with rhyming words. We are building our early phonics knowledge as we play rhyming games and thinking about sounds and letters.
Our Little Bears are enjoying story times using props and actions. Dear Zoo is a clear favourite as we share the story with lots of cuddly animals. Our singing glove props are plenty of fun as we enjoy counting nursery rhymes together, especially 5 current buns which we gobble up! Our musical instruments are helping use to discover early phonic activities as we build our listening and attention skills. 2 year olds are not built to sit for a long time so we love to get moving along to music during group times.
We still love our daily dance clubs. We proudly request our favourite songs each day as we boogie together in the Hartley Room. I must say, there are some very cool moves this year!
💕Our Nursery Family 💕
Over the last few weeks we have started to explore what makes us unique and special, and how that makes up our nursery family.
What our likes and dislikes are, what we enjoy doing. We’ve used mirrors to look at our hair colour and shape, the colour of our eyes and our skin. We’ve talked about different cultures and looked at flags.
Some of the lunch club children have started making drawings for our special wall display.
Over the next few weeks we would like the children to find out as much as they can about what makes them unique, their culture and heritage. We would like you to upload this to tapestry, along with photos so we can learn more about each other.
The children can also bring things in to show each other or display on the wall.
🤩Tapestry🤩
Our Home Learning section on Tapestry helps us to share experiences with our nursery community. Please upload chatter pictures for children to share special events and exciting news during our group times. You can also find activities to support children’s learning at home.
🐍Lunar New Year🐍
Next Wednesday 29th January we will be celebrating Lunar New Year at RTG. Finn’s Mum and Grandmother will be offering some crafts for children in the morning creating gifting red envelopes and Charlotte’s Mum will be visiting in the afternoon to help children to try out some traditional brush stroke writing. Children will also be able to assist in cooking a vegetable noodle dish to try at snack time.
🔨Goodbye Gary🔨
Thank you all for all of your contributions for our caretaker Gary. Gary has been wonderful to work with this past 5 years and we will all miss having him around. Together, we raised £200 for Gary to use towards his new home improvements. The children are very intrigued about his new part train carriage home! We wish him and Eve good luck in their new adventure living by the sea.
💻Digital Detox💻
From 20th- 31st January we are joining St Martins Primary School on a digital detox for children. If you are taking part, please share your experience via the digital detox memo on Tapestry.
🎈Birthday Celebrations 🎈
This year, we will be celebrating 25 years of Ready Teddy Go Nursery. We would like to celebrate with a fun day for children and families to attend outside of nursery hours in the summer term. We are going to mark this occasion and use the day as an opportunity to fundraise for RTG. In the past, we have appointed parent champions to assist in a variety of wonderful events for the whole community. If you would like to be involved in the planning of this event, please let me know. We are always very grateful for parent input.
🍏Snacks🍏
Thank you all for your snack contributions for children to share each day. You can bring in whole or packaged fruits, breadsticks, crackers or biscuits for children to share. Please do not pack any individual snacks in children’s bags. Snack donations for everyone to share can be given to a teacher at drop off.
🍽️Healthy Lunches🍽️ Thank you all for preparing healthy and nutritious lunches for children to enjoy at Lunch Club. Please remember we are a nut free setting due to allergies. If you would like some new lunch boxes ideas, please take a look at this website. https://www.nhs.uk/healthier-families/recipes/healthier-lunchboxes/
🪥Oral health🪥 We are committed to promoting oral health at RTG. We have been talking lots about the importance of tooth brushing with children. We would like to ensure children understand how they can keep their teeth nice and healthy. You can visit this website for more information. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-teeth-and-gums/taking-care-of-childrens-teeth/
🧻Toilet Training 🧻 When it is time for your child to start toilet training, we are ready and willing to support this. Collectively, we have many years of potty training experience to support you on your journey. We will also be running a free potty training workshop for parents in February. Nursery families have priority booking for all Family Centre workshops, courses and events. This website gives great information on how to prepare your child for potty training. https://eric.org.uk/potty-training/
🪀Toys from home🪀
Please only bring a toy from home to nursery if a member of staff has asked you to. We do not want to be responsible for loss or damage.
☕️Cuppa and Catch ups☕️
Our next Parent and Key Person meetings will be held at the end of this term. In the meantime, you are welcome to pop in for a ‘cuppa and catch up’ with your child’s Key Person one morning or afternoon. Please email me at emcnursery@hotmail.co.uk to arrange a suitable time.
🧸Extra Sessions🧸
We have some sessions with extra spaces available. If you would like to increase your child’s attendance, please email me for availability.
⭐️Attendance⭐️
Please let Miss Golding know via telephone, WhatsApp or email if your child will not be attending a session. Please give the reason your child won’t be attending for our records.
🤒Infection control 🤒
Please remember we have 48 hour exclusion periods to prevent infection. Our health and safety polices with details on illnesses and exclusion periods are available to read in the documents section on Tapestry.
🚂Play groups🚂
Did you know that EMC run two stay and play groups each week during term time?
Little Monkeys toddler group is on every Tuesday from 10-11.30am
Friday for Families 0-5 Stay and Play is on every Friday morning from 10am-11.30am
From Friday 21st February, we are starting 'Roots' Rockers and Rollers' in our onsite café Roots. This group is for expectant parents and families with babies under 1 years old from 10am-11.30am.
💜Warm Wednesdays💜
In 2022, Epsom Methodist Church started Warm Wednesdays in response to the cost of living crisis and rising energy costs. We have been planning Warm Wednesdays for the coming winter as we feel there is still a strong need for this type of support for families in our community.
From 6th November -26th March EMC welcomes everyone from 9.30am-6pm every Wednesday. You can stay as long as you like in our warm space with free hot drinks, a bowl of tasty soup and a roll for lunch and a family after school club with games, crafts and activities for children and of course a freshly cooked evening meal for everyone.
Our Warm Wednesdays Team are able to help you to access support for all of the following issues:
•Benefits, welfare rights, housing and rents
•Energy saving and dealing with energy suppliers
•Finding a job and accessing training
•Getting help in a crisis
•Mental Health and Well-being
You do not need to book, just drop in.
Warm Wednesdays would not be possible without the support of a wonderful team of volunteers. Please do let me know if you are able to offer some of your time to support Warm Wednesdays whether weekly or on the odd occasion. You can sign up to a rota. There are various roles including serving drinks or food, cooking, setting up, doing crafts, cake baking and more. Please email for further details.
🌟Wish List🌟 At Ready Teddy Go, we have our very own Amazon Wish list. Thank you all for your generous donations of new and exciting resources for children to enjoy together at nursery so far. It’s a bit like Christmas with so much excitement opening the packages together with your children! We will update our Wish List each term. https://amzn.eu/hlIdl1h
🐻Uniform🐻
From September 2025, we will be making uniform compulsory at Ready Teddy Go. We believe that this change will promote equality and enhance our strong sense of community. Wearing a uniform at nursery will also support children with their transition to primary school when the time comes.
Children will need to wear Ready Teddy Go t-shirts or polo shirts and sweatshirts with bottoms of their choice to nursery.
You can purchase a range of coloured t-shirts, polo shirts and sweatshirts with our Ready Teddy Go logo online at: https://www.schooltrends.co.uk/uniform/EpsomMethodistNurseryKT185AQ
We also have a selection of second hand jumpers and t-shirts available for a small donation at nursery. Please ask a member of staff if you would like to choose some second hand items. We are always grateful for second hand uniform donations when your child leaves nursery or grows out of their uniform.
Dates for your diary
📚World Book Day - Thursday 6th March📚
Children are invited to come to nursery dressed as a character from one of their favourite books. Dressing up is not compulsory, children can wear comfy pyjamas to snuggle up and enjoy books worn instead if they prefer. We have book tokens to give to every child to use in local book shops towards the purchase of a new book.
🌸Mothers Day -Wednesday 26th March🌸
We would like to invite all Mums to join us from 10.30am -12pm for a special Mother's Day Stay and Play session. If your child does not attend on Wednesdays, you are very welcome to join us from 10.30am- 12pm. Grandmothers are also welcome to come along. Nearer the time we will put out a memo for donations of cakes and treats to share on the day.
🥪Fathers Day- Thursday 12th June 🥪
Dads and Grandads are invited to join us at nursery from 10.30am-12pm for a stay and play session. Come and create with your child and enjoy an egg or bacon sandwich. If your child does not attend this session, you are still welcome to come along on the day.
🏅Sports Day- Friday 20th June 🏅
We have moved sports day forwards a little this year after a couple of years of questionable weather disrupting our plans last minute. You are all invited to join us at Rosebery park from 9.45am- 12pm for races, games and a picnic.
🧸Friday 4th July- No Lunch Club🧸
There will be no lunch club session on Friday 4th July. We will be holding our stay and play session especially for new children joining us in September 2025 this afternoon. Please ensure all children are collected at 12.15pm
