Our playrooms will be making their own Scarecrows with the best one being submitted into The Big Barrhead Scarecrow Festival! 

      Scarecrow Flyer  

We would appreciate any donations from yourself to allow us to decorate our playrooms and nature garden for our Halloween pumpkin pick! 

If you are able to donate any Halloween items/decorations please leave them with a staff member when dropping off/picking up your child.

Thank You!   

Recycled Fashion Show and Pumpkins 2021

It’s Maths Week Scotland! 

Below we have added our Thinglink with lots of information about different numeracy activities, why not try some of these at home and upload them to our Twitter! 

For more information about Maths Week Scotland please follow the link below to their website;

www.mathsweek.scot

This week we have launched the Parent Club ‘Boosting Family Wellbeing’ Campaign is launching this week. The campaign provides tips and supports parents to introduce positive interactions with their children into their daily routine. Different households face different challenges – but one thing everyone has in common is their mental health, and the importance of looking after it.

The Boosting Family Wellbeing campaign will familiarise parents with principles that build children’s happiness, confidence and independence – things like empowerment, safety, choice, working together and trustworthiness. These simple, everyday tips can help families reduce stress, improve children’s development and strengthen long-term bonds between parents and children.

This campaign is now live and will run until the 12 September on radio, digital, OOH and social channels.

How to Help:

• We would love your support to promote the campaign and showcase the tips and support to as many families as possible during the campaign period
•  Please share the campaign information and assets across your channels, and include the hashtag #FamilyWellbeing on your social channels

Stakeholder Toolkit:

We have a number of assets and tools which you can use to promote the campaign to families across your channels. The Parent Club ‘Boosting Family Wellbeing’ Stakeholder Toolkit attached contains the following:

• Campaign overview
• Key messages
• Social media images and suggested copy
• Campaign videos
• SMS Text/WhatsApp copy
• Summary Document – Including translated assets
  • This will also be provided in Arabic, French, Gaelic, Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, Romanian and Simplified Chinese. As well BSL, audio English and easy read. This will be available from the week commencing 16^th

Campaign Assets:21-22 – Parent Club – Stakeholder Toolkit – Boosting Family Wellbeing – …

You can access all ‘Boosting Family Wellbeing’ campaign assets via the Parent website here:

Access the Parent ‘Boosting Family Wellbeing’ Assets via the PC Stakeholder Page here

Please click here  to see a virtual 360 views of the rooms. Feel free to have a virtual walk round, if your press the icons you will be given more information on your tour. Ally Bally tour coming soon!

Last week in Zickety Dickety Dock, we have been exploring author Julia Donaldson as the children enjoy listening and reading her books. The staff have been reading a different book each day, and allowing the children to listen to the stories in other ways.

The children are familiar with some of Julia Donaldson’s stories such as ‘The Gruffalo’ and have enjoyed re-telling this and acting it out.

We discussed that the role of an author is to write the story. The children have been engaged in various mark-making experiences, which helps to develop their shape/letter formation and their fine motor skills.

The children in Zickety Dickety Dock enjoyed some fun sensory experiences outside.

As part of our ‘Arthurlie Summer Fun’, the first week was Sensory Week. We had water, sand, playdough and mud.

In the water the children used different resources to observe the flow of water and how it moves slowly or quickly. The children built various shaped sand castles using buckets and containers. In the playdough, the children enjoyed exploring different scents such as orange, lemon, peppermint and fruit tea.

We added some water to the sand to see how that changed the texture and also to the playdough.

The children had great fun last Tuesday and Thursday on our Slip n Slide.

The staff have created Summer Fun themes for the next 7 weeks. Link is below for more information.

We will be ensuring the children have the opportunity to participate in lots of fun-filled experiences.

Please ensure you provide your child with appropriate clothing for the weather including sun cream and sun hats as we will be spending the majority of the time outside.

We kindly ask our parents/carers to continue to provide extra clothing for children (tops, trousers, pants and socks) for when they become wet or messy during play and for accidents.

Any questions please speak to staff who will be happy to help.

Arthurlie Summer Fun 2021

The council’s website has now been updated with information about free school meals and clothing grants for session 2021-22, and a link to information about the School Age Payment has been added to the page. The online application forms for free school meals and clothing grants will go live on 12 July on the same page. You may wish to share the link with your school community:

https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/free-school-meals

Details about how to apply for the School Age Payment, and support available from MART with applying for all grants, have also been shared via the council’s social media pages and can be retweeted here:

Science Technology Engineering Maths We want to build effective contributors for the future by ensuring equality and equity. We wish to challenge stereotypes and develop resilience in our young people. Inspired by the Questioneers Books the children are learning life skills and we are developing the young workforce by exploring jobs .e.g. architects, plumbers, engineers and scientists. We are creating opportunities for teamwork and problem solving.  Please click below for further information.

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1444348129099907075

Please follow the link to access more information. www.nhsinform.scot/childflu.

Please see information in relation to dates for your pre-school child’s visits to school.

School Visits 2021

Please Click here to see our May newsletter.

Click here to see an update from PoPP

Welcome to our March 21 Newsletter

“Good morning everyone, Happy World Book Day 📖. We will be celebrating World Book Day in a few ways. We have made 2 virtual libraries for you to explore, once you follow the links below press the icon’s to access the different stories.

Under 3s link: Click here

3-5 link: Click here

Please remember if you are celebrating at home send us your photos and we show them off!

Hope you enjoy all your different stories”

Dear Parent/Carer

As you have previously contacted this department requesting a swap of your current Early Learning and  Childcare arrangements you are being sent the following information.  For session 2021-22, all requests to swap must now be made through the new early learning and childcare application form as detailed below.  Please note that if you do not submit your requested change through a new application, we will not be able to consider your request.

East Renfrewshire Council must ensure that all Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) places are allocated equitably.  On 21 January 2021 the Education Committee of East Renfrewshire Council agreed a new admissions policy with some slight changes to the priorities.  These are noted below for your information:

Order of Priorities for Allocation of Eligible 3 and 4 Year Old Places within East Renfrewshire Council Early Learning and Childcare Establishments

Effective for Session Commencing August 2021 and Beyond

For use when applications exceed available places

In the event that the number of applications received for a particular establishment and operating model combination is greater than the number of places available, the criteria below are used to allocate places and are listed in order of priority:

1. East Renfrewshire resident where one of the following conditions been met: child protection, prevention, or additional support needs. Automatic entry will be given to any child considered by the Social Work Department to be in need of protection, who is looked after by the authority, or whose admission will prevent reception in to care.
2. East Renfrewshire resident where a funded ELC place has been granted to support deferred entry to primary school.*
3. East Renfrewshire resident in pre-school year with no existing Early Learning and Childcare provision in place (Note – this does not include families who have intentionally left an existing allocation).
4. East Renfrewshire resident residing within the Early Learning and Childcare Community of the establishment.
5. East Renfrewshire resident where a sibling attends the establishment and will continue to do so in the next session.
6. East Renfrewshire resident where the child is part of a single parent/carer family and where it would be advantageous to the care and welfare of the child and/or family to attend the requested establishment.
7. East Renfrewshire resident with no other listed priority.
8. Non East Renfrewshire resident.

Please note:

The criteria will be applied in the order shown above. If for any category the number of requests exceeds the number of places available, the next succeeding criteria will be used to prioritise these requests and so on until all priority criteria have been exhausted. If, after this process, two or more requests cannot be distinguished as having priority, then a ballot will be held to allocate the places available. This ballot will be organised by the Community Admissions Panel which is comprised of officers of the Education Department and the Head Teacher of each ELC setting within the community.

You will see that pre-school children with an existing allocation do not have priority over ante-preschool children, who largely come under Priority 4.  Although places are allocated for two years, for pre-school children, requesting a change of setting or model, a new application can be made which will be considered alongside other Priority 4 applications.  This is a change to the previous policy where applications to swap would be considered after all new applications had been considered.  The application form is available on the council website  https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/nursery-places-3-4-application-form

It should be noted that by re-applying there is no guarantee that you will receive both your first choice of setting and or model. It should also be noted that eg where your request is to swap to a core placement, these places are limited and as such we will not be able to accommodate all requests.  Where we are unable to offer you a change to setting and or model, your child will remain in their current placement for session 2021-22. The cut-off date for submission of applications for Session 2021-22 is 28^th February 2021.  Applications received after this date will be treated as late and will not be looked at until after all allocations are made.

There is free access across Scotland and would encourage you as well as promoting to your families to log on and register for lifetime access to all six of the online courses.

Jason Leitch Letter