Chillfest returns for 2016
It’s nearly June so it must be time for Chillfest our ever-popular festival for children, families and friends! This year it’s the return of the pirate theme, so rummage in your treasure chests and dust down your pirate finery, ready to join us at Snapdragons Weston on Saturday 18th June, 1.00-4.00pm.
Coming up at this year's event, we've got live music with the wonderful Jamma de Samba, a bouncy castle, raffle, tombolas, shack building with Tim Graham, delicious piratey food on our barbecue, plank walking, pirate treasure hunts and... the big one... the return of the Father's Day 'Tug of War’! We want as many dads as possible, so please come along and join in!
Chillfest is a fundraising event and this year’s charity is Teenage Cancer Trust in honour of Abbie Dougherty, Head of Babies at Snapdragons Weston. As many of you will know, Abbie has recently been given the devastating news that her cancer has returned and treatment is not possible. Abbie joined us as an apprentice nearly four years and has been a wonderful, passionate and popular member of our team, loved by colleagues, babies and parents alike. Please help us to make this year’s Chillfest the busiest ever so that we can honour Abbie’s wishes and help other young people with cancer through the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust.
If you would like to donate to Abbie’s JustGiving page please follow this link https://www.justgiving.com/AbbieDougherty
Meet our Inclusion Manager
Hi, my name is Alison Shires and I am the Inclusion Manager for Snapdragons.
I have worked in the early years sector for over thirty years. I have been the Manager at our Atworth nursery for the past five years, after leaving my role of 22 years as Senior Early Years Inclusion Adviser for Wiltshire Council.
As early years providers, we want each child in our care to have the best possible start to their nursery education. Snapdragons welcomes all children and, for some of the children in our care, this will mean additional support, training or resources are required to ensure they can develop in all areas learning and development covered by the Government’s document “Early Years Foundation Stage, Development Matters”.
In each of the nurseries we have a named Special Educational Need and Disability Co-ordinators, known as SENDcos. SENDcos have attended specialist training provided by the local authority in your area. They will be able to support you and your child to access the appropriate professionals to help. In nursery they will support you and your child’s key person to implement appropriate support. We will monitor and evaluate their progress and share this with you at regular meetings, that you will be invited to attend.
My role in Snapdragons as Inclusion Manager is to support the nursery SENDco in their role, in addition to the support they receive from their Local Authority.
I am here to support you the parents / carers. Please contact me you should you need to discuss any concerns, worries and successes of your child at alison@snapdragonsnursery.com
Spring menus at Snapdragons
As we reach the beginning of spring, it's time for another menu change and we've added some delicious seasonal dishes for the children. These menus will all take effect from March 21st and run through until June, when summer starts. If you'd like to know any details about any of the recipes on on menus, then please send over your feedback to us on our healthy eating page.
Photo galleries return!
When we updated our website last year, one of the things lost in the shuffle were our extensive photo galleries. Moving to a updated site meant that the galleries didn't quite work as they did before, so we instead had to cycle the albums on display, meaning that hordes of our favourite photos were lost to time after just a few short weeks.
We've heard your feedback though and you wanted the galleries back! So, we've worked tirelessly to find a solution and now have one. The galleries now operate almost identically to how they did before, so no more disappearing - the albums will be persistent.
The actual albums themselves are hosted via each nursery's private Google Photos account. This is the same account that we use for sharing our photos between devices and then uploading to Parent Zone, whilst at nursery. It is completely secure and the photo rights are owned by Snapdragons, not Google.
Feel free to head over to your nursery's page now and view their photos. We'll be adding more and more over the coming weeks, as we capture all of the fantastic moments of magic during your child's day. We hope you enjoy the new galleries!
Stories With Snapdragons: Stick Man!
We have been on the Stick Man trail at Westonbirt Arboretum this week and wanted to hear the full story for ourselves so, this episode, we read the beloved 'Stick Man', by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler. It is read by Mary Llewellin and Rhys Williams.
Stick Man lives in the family tree With his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three. But it's dangerous being a Stick Man. A dog wants to play with him, a swan builds her nest with him. He even ends up on a fire! Will he ever get back to the family tree.