Learn with Mini Minds

We are delighted to announce the launch our new blog, Mini Minds, bringing to you short features and articles all about the learning and education practices for the children at Snapdragons Nursery.

Each post will focus on different aspects of the children's learning, taking into account our monthly themes, current events and festivals, outdoor learning, healthy eating, as well as many others.

Our first post is written by Catherine Bond, one of our Early Years Advisory Teachers, who is looking at a recent activity the children have enjoyed - baking Welsh Cakes. She looks into the different experiences the children go through during the activity, identifying the skills that they'll be developing.

Head over to Mini Minds to start ready and remember to check back for new articles each week!

Spring menus are here

We're saying goodbye to winter and bursting into spring with our new springtime menus. They're packed with colourful fruit and vegetables and carefully balanced to give your children all the nutrients they need to learn and play with energy.

Spring brings with it some tasty seasonal delights, such as spring greens, carrots, purple sprouting broccoli, courgettes and rhubarb and we've featured these in our meals to make the most of the fresh ingredients we can buy locally. You may notice that we've added a weaning menu for very young babies too. These simple purees are based on ingredients in the main meals and accompanied by finger-foods so that babies are experiencing a range of flavours and textures to develop their taste for lots of different foods. Of course, weaning is individual to every family so close communication between parents and our team helps to ensure that babies are introduced to food in the way you want.

Take a look at our latest menus for the season to see some of the delicious dishes that your children will be able to enjoy at Snapdragons. You'll see favourites like fish fingers, cottage pie, sausage and mash and spaghetti bolognese as well as some more adventurous meals to develop little palates. They're all made from scratch using top quality fresh ingredients from our local suppliers. The nurseries currently participating in the 'Food For Life' programme are: Grosvenor, Horfield, Keynsham & Weston. Other nurseries follow these menus, but are not currently enrolled in the programme.

Welcome to The Nursery Kitchen

We're excited to bring you a new series, all about cooking and we've called it The Nursery Kitchen! We love cooking at Snapdragons and try to encourage the children to prepare and eat healthy and fun meals throughout their nursery day and their lives in general.

With Shrove Tuesday coming up tomorrow, the first episode is all about pancakes! Big fluffy American ones that are a bit different than your usual crepes. We show you three variations on a theme, all using the same basic recipe. Try blueberries paired with lemon curd, roasted butternut squash pancakes topped with grated cheese, or spinach pancakes partnered with homemade tomato sauce. Have a read of the recipe below and then watch the video to see how easy it is!

Ingredients (to serve 4-6)
135g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
130ml milk
1 egg
2 tbsp butter

Nursery Rhymes of the Week

To help increase the children's knowledge, as well as their communication and language, we've introduced a 'Nursery Rhyme of the Week', focusing on a different song each week. This should allow the children to learn and experience some traditional and modern nursery rhymes whilst at Snapdragons and have a good sing-song along the way!

To help you follow along at home, we will be adding the lyrics, along with an audio track to our website each Monday, so you can listen along too. To find the latest rhyme, just follow the ‘nursery rhymes’ link under our podcast tab, or follow this link.

You can also subscribe to our ‘Songs With Snapdragons’ podcast on iTunes, to have them sent to your mobile device every time we release new ones.

We hope you find the rhymes useful and enjoy them as much as the children do! Here's our latest one so you can start singing along right now!

Red Nose mania!

We're all going crazy in preparation for Red Nose Day and you can now buy your noses at your nursery!

Coming on Friday March 24th, we're going to have plenty of fun fundraising activities lined up throughout that entire week, so you won't want to miss out! Step one is to get your own nose though, so make sure to pick one up when you're next at nursery - there are some great selections this time!

As we approach Red Nose Day itself, be sure to check your nursery for a list of events that will be happening that week.