Green Flag Success for Knockbreda Nursery School

Thank you to all of our pupils, parents and staff for their continued support of our eco ethos, here at Knockbreda Nursery School.

School is delighted to have successfully reapplied for our Green Flag award!

Please see the comments from our Green Flag Assessors below:

Congratulations to all concerned - staff and pupils alike, and not forgetting the caretaker and many parents who helped your school achieve its environmental targets.

The assessors made the following comments about the strengths of your school :

• Excellent participation from the whole nursery on the Eco Committee.

• Great links and work with Eco Schools delivery partners and other great initiatives such as Earth Day, Energy Saving Week and Comic Relief Day.

• Great to see the children taking part in the Busta Bake Challenge which really ties in with their Waste topic.

• The Eco Schools Team loved the idea of you School Eco Promise Wall – great idea!

• Fantastic to see pupils enjoying so much time spent outdoors, incorporating their learning with nature.

Ship Ahoy!

The children at Knockbreda Nursery School have been enjoying learning through play during our topic Ship Ahoy! Here is a little flavour of what they have been up to….

Green Apples

Red Apples

Thank you!

Thank you to all of our parents and carers for their generous contributions on our Sun Safety Day!

Together, we raised £93.00 for the Cancer Fund for Children! Many thanks to you all.

June Newsletter

For information about our final month together at Knockbreda Nursery School, please see our June Newsletter here.

All Creatures Great and Small

The children at Knockbreda Nursery School have thoroughly enjoyed learning about minibeasts through our topic All Creatures Great and Small! Here is a flavour of what we have been ‘learning through our play’ during this exciting topic!

Red Apples

Green Apples

Nursery Eco Promises

Following the success of our Eco Week, Earth Day and Energy Saving Home Challenge, the Nursery children have been making their eco promises.

The children and their families all selected an eco promise to make;

• making space for nature

• recycling more,

• using less water

• saving energy

Each of these family promises was represented by a colour.

The children each had the opportunity to tie their chosen ribbon to the Eco Promise Wall to create a rainbow of ribbons on our Eco Promise Wall.

Thank you to all our Knockbreda families for helping to support our Eco School!

May News

What a wonderful return to Nursery we have had after our Easter break!

The sun was shining on most days and the children have been busy learning indoors and outdoors.

The boys and girls are making the very most of the play provision on offer and they are thoroughly enjoying our Forest School sessions.

This month Nursery will be beginning a new topic, All Creatures Great and Small which will focus on learning on minibeasts.

Find out more in our May School Newsletter.

Wake Up Spring!

The Red and Green Apples have been enjoying learning all about our new topic Wake Up Spring! The children have had lots of fun learning indoors and of course outdoors, making the most of this sunny spell of weather!

Green Apples

Red Apples

April News

Welcome to Term 3!

We hope you all had a relaxing Easter break.

It has been a wonderful first week back and the children have made full use of our three outdoor spaces, where they have been enjoying learning and playing in the sunny weather!

Find out what will be happening in Nursery this month in our April Newsletter.

Dr Mitchell-Barrett

Welcome back to school!

Welcome back to school Red and Green Apples! We have missed you all!

The boys and girls have had such a happy first week back at school. They have loved seeing all of their friends again and starting our new topic Fairytale Fantasy. The children have all enjoyed returning to play in their favourite areas of school, both indoors and outdoors!

Here is a little flavour of what our ‘apples’ have been up to during their first week back at Knockbreda Nursery School!

Green Apples

Red Apples

World Book Day 2021

This week we are celebrating our love of books through our remote learning Book Week activities.

Even though we are not all together in school just now, we are celebrating World Book Day ‘together but apart’.

Red Apples- World Book Day 2021- Click on the photos to see more

Green Apples- World Book Day 2021- Click on the photos to see more

March News

We are looking forward to welcoming all of our Red and Green Apples back to school on Monday 8 March 2021. Please find attached our March Newsletter.

Thank you!

Dear Parents and Carers

As we come to the end of this half-term, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your hard work in supporting your children and our school since the start of January.  School is not the same without all our Red and Green Apples and we miss them very much.  Thank you for helping to assist your child's learning and development, whilst also juggling the many challenges we are all currently facing.  

It has not been easy trying to meet the needs of our young children (both emotionally and educationally), meeting work deadlines and trying to keep our homes calm in these uncertain times.  We have all done the very best that we can, and you deserve a big 'well done' for making it to half-term! 

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all our school staff for the work they have undertaken to operate ongoing childcare support for the children of key workers,  whilst continuing to provide high quality remote learning resources for the children staying at home.

Hopefully after half-term, we will receive information from the Department of Education about our return to the classrooms and we will look forward to being together again at school.  In the meantime, new Contingency Packs have been sent home for your child and the videos to support each learning activity in the pack will be made available via our website after half-term.  Please only use the current topic Contingency Packs (as outlined on the website clips) to support the learning videos uploaded each day.  These have been carefully organised to cover the termly topic content, in line with our pre-school curriculum here at Knockbreda Nursery School.  

If you have been unable to collect your new pack this week for use after half-term, these will be available again for collection on Monday 22nd February.

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy half-term break.

Kind regards,

Dr Mitchell-Barrett

February 2021 Newsletter

This month Knockbreda Nursery School is focusing on wellbeing and mental health.

Read our February Newsletter to find out more about how to support your child’s wellbeing during this extended lockdown period.

January Newsletter

Our Newsletter for January can be viewed here.

School is closed for pupils - Wednesday 6 January 2021

Dear Parents and Carers

I hope you had a restful Christmas break and may I wish you all a very happy New Year!

As you will have seen from recent media coverage, the coronavirus transmission rates have raised significantly during the Christmas break and both Scotland and England have commenced a period of lockdown. In Northern Ireland, a period of remote learning is in place for primary and post-primary schools.  We are still awaiting information following yesterday’s emergency meeting of the NI Executive however, given today’s uncertainty surrounding school openings,  Knockbreda Nursery School will not open to pupils tomorrow as previously planned.  Instead, Wednesday 6 January 2021 will operate as a staff training day and this will replace the 28 May 20201 training day which had been previously scheduled. 

I apologise for the short notice of this change of date and appreciate the challenges that this may cause, however this decision has been made in the interests of the safety of our pupils, staff and school community. 

This is not a decision that has been taken lightly but it is hoped that by remaining closed to pupils tomorrow, school will help to keep our school community safe by reducing exposure to and transmission of Covid-19.  This will also give school time to consider the outcomes from the Stormont Executive meeting today, as their decisions may impact how our school operates for the remainder of this week and ongoing.  Nursery will be in contact as soon as the outcomes of this meeting are communicated to us and staff have had time to reflect on the impact of the new restrictions and how we can safely operate our school day for our pupils, parents and staff.

This is not the start to the new term that any of us wanted, however we must prioritise health and wellbeing.  May I thank you for your continued patience, support and positive partnership in these most difficult of times.  It is sincerely appreciated by myself and all of the staff at Knockbreda Nursery School.  We are very much looking forward to welcoming you and your child back to Nursery once it is safe to do so.

Further information will follow today in relation to planning for key worker emergency childcare provision in the event that our school is required to close.

Let's hope that a brighter, happier and healthier 2021 lies ahead for us all.

Kind regards,

Dr R. Mitchell-Barrett

Principal

Knockbreda Nursery School

Information for Prospective Parents and Carers

Welcome to the Knockbreda Nursery School website!

Thank you for thinking about applying to our school.

To find out more about what a ‘Day in the Life’ of Knockbreda Nursery School looks like, please watch our short video below.

We are a busy and happy school and this is just a shapshot of what we get up to, here at Knockbreda Nursery School!

To find out more about the application process, please visit the New Parents, Admissions Tab.

https://www.knockbredanursery.co.uk/admissions

Thank you!

Thank to the Knockbreda Nursery School community for their generous contributions to our Food Bank appeal.

We were overwhelmed by your generosity!

All donations will be sent to local families in need this Christmas, thank you!

Happy Christmas everyone!

Thank you to all our Knockbreda family and friends for their support this term, it has been sincerely appreciated. We have had wonderful first term together!

Happy Christmas everyone!

Red Apples

Green Apples