Little Millers Pre-School Nursery

Welcome to the Little Millers Pre-School Nursery page!

Nursery Teacher: Bev Howland

Nursery Assistant: Jane Warne

Nursery Assistant: Lauren Gardner 

30 Hour Free Childcare Entitlement

From September 2017 Drapers Mills will be offering 30 Hours Free childcare.  The sessions will be 9.00am to 3.00pm. Parents will have the option to pay for sessions outside these hours if needed.  Please contact Mrs Arnold for further details.

30 hour FREE childcare entitlement

 

Many working parents of 3 to 4 year olds in England will be eligible for 30 hours of free childcare – rather than the current 15 hours from September 2017.

But the first thing you need to know is that this is 30 hours free for only 38 weeks per year – not 52 weeks of the year. It’s basically equivalent to school term times so fits in perfectly with Drapers Mills Primary School and Little Millers Nursery. Not everyone is eligible. But everyone will still receive the 15 hours free childcare that is currently available.

Eligibility rules for 30 hours free childcare:

• Your child will be aged 3 or 4 when the scheme starts in your area
• Both parents must be working – or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family
• Each parent earns, on average, a weekly minimum equivalent to 16 hours at National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage
• Each parent must have an annual income of less than £100,000
• You live in England

How much is the equivalent of 16 hours at National Minimum Wage?

It depends on your age. For this scheme, the minimum amount will always reflect the lowest hourly rate that a person of your age can legally be paid. Therefore, currently for a parent aged 21-24, you’d need to earn a weekly average of at least £111.20. For a parent aged 25+, you’d need to earn a weekly average of at least £115.20.

What if one parent in a couple isn’t working?

This is basically a scheme to help working parents, so families where one parent doesn’t work, or both parents don’t work, will usually not be eligible for these additional 15 hours.

However, if one parent isn’t working because they’re an official carer (eg receiving benefits relating to being a carer) or they are receiving disability benefits, and the other parent is working, then the Government has stated it “intends to make provision” to support these families.

There is also additional entitlement if the parent normally works but is temporarily away from the workplace, for example on statutory sick pay.

What if you are self-employed or on a zero hours contract?

You will be eligible if you (or both of you in a couple) earn at least the equivalent of 16 hours at the National Minimum Wage.

What if one parent loses their job?

There will be a short “grace period” – although this hasn’t yet been defined – allowing parents to have a chance to find new employment.

How do you apply for the 30 hours free childcare?

You’ll be able to apply for both the 30-hour scheme and the Tax-Free Childcare scheme through a joint online application being developed by HMRC. This is because the eligibility requirements for both schemes are aligned.

 

 

You probably know everything about the current childcare entitlement but just in case…

Currently, 3 and 4 year old children are eligible for 570 hours of childcare a year – which is usually broken down to 15 hours each week over 38 weeks of the year . This covers:

• Nurseries and nursery classes
• Playgroups and pre-school
• Childminders
• Sure Start Children’s Centres

Depending on income levels, some 2 year olds in England can get free early education and childcare. In order to get claim, you must be getting one of the following:

• Income Support
• Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Support through part 6 of the Immigration and Asylum Act
• Child Tax Credit and/or Working Tax Credit and have an annual income under £16,190
• The guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
• The Working Tax Credit 4-week run on (the payment you get when you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
• Universal Credit

In the news 22.03.2017 : the government has today published eligibility criteria for parents interested in the 30 hour offer, as well as their new website ‘Childcare Choices’ which aims to help parents understand what support is available for their childcare needs, including information on Tax Free Childcare and the 30 hour offer.

You can view the eligibility information for the 30 hours here: https://www.gov.uk/…/30_hours_free_childcare_eligibility.pdf

And the childcare choices website is here: https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/

Speaking about the launch of Tax Free Childcare, and the new childcare choices website, Alliance chief executive Neil Leitch said:

“While any help for families struggling with the cost of childcare is to be welcomed, we remain concerned that the tax-free childcare scheme will be of limited help to those most in need.
Not only it is a regressive initiative – the more money you can afford to save, the more help you get from government – but it also fails to address the root cause of rising childcare costs: insufficient funding.
The government continues to claim that tax-free childcare and the 30-hour offer will save parents in England thousands of pounds each year, but without adequate investment into the early years sector, what we are actually likely to see is a rise in childcare fees as some providers look for ways to plug the growing funding gap, and a loss in places as others opt out of the free entitlement due to insufficient funding.
If the government is going to keep the promise that it made to parents in its manifesto, it simply must invest what’s needed to ensure that these childcare policies can succeed in the long term.”

We are a high quality nursery provision for 3-5 year olds. On our webpage you will find lots of useful information about the nursery and images displaying the children's interests, great achievements in their learning and development.

Our Nursery runs from 8:30-11:30pm and 12:30-3:30pm. You can have the flexibility of sending your child to morning sessions, afternoon sessions or all day sessions using your entitlement of 15 hours free childcare a week. Furthermore, we provide a lunch club at the cost of £4 with a free lunch included, either a hot meal or packed lunch.

Starting with us

At Little Millers we accept children from the term of their third birthday. We offer 5 mornings or 5 afternoons a week completely free of charge as part of the Government Funding Scheme! Alternatively, you can purchase extra sessions as we offer full day care from 8:30 - 3:15.

For more details about when your child could start with us or to put your name on our waiting list please contact us on 01843 223989.

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Look at our amazing learning environment! We are going to have so much fun here and develop a love of learning together.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

We have been learning about the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We can retell this story very well as a group. We have also been trying all the food the hungry caterpillar eats, trying new foods is a very confident thing to do so well done Little Millers!  We have painted our very own caterpillars and butterflies, counted and added quantities with our counting caterpillar and have watched the change of very own caterpillars to chrysalis to butterflies. What a busy time we have had.

Forest, Forest, Forest School, lots of fun and loads to do !

We are all very excited about starting our forest school sessions. Forest school is a fantastic outdoor experience that takes place in the woods. Forest school encourages confidence, self esteem and resilience  challenges thinking and develops communication and language skills. This was definitely evident from our first trip, imagine what the children will be like in a few weeks time...

Term 5 - Pets and Animals

Pets and animals, we have started to learn about the different names of pets and animals there are. Together we have made a pet shop with a kennel for a dog, a basket for a cat and a tough tray world for smaller animals. We have also been talking about and drawing our pets and attempting to write their names. Furthermore, we have noticed the changes in the seasons when we are outdoor learning, that we don't always needs to wear a coat and that flowers have started to grow in the garden and they need lots of watering because it’s been so hot.

Term 4 - Stomp, Chomp, Big Roars here come the Dinosaurs!

This term we are interested in learning all about dinosaurs.  We have been enjoying some stories about dinosaurs, our favourite two books at the moment are Dinosaurs Roar and Stomp, Chomp Big Roars Here Come The Dinosaurs! because they are action stories where we can pretend to be dinosaurs which is so much fun. We can recognise some dinosaurs, we can say their names and some of them are really long too. We have also been exploring what happened to our model volcano we made when we put bicarbonate of soda and vinegar together. Furthermore, we have been watching what happened to the eggs we found when we put them in water and the next day the eggs had cracked and out popped dinosaurs.

We have been exploring what happens when we mix the primary colours together and we have been amazed that we can make many different types of orange, green and purple.

Also, we have been learning how to care for ourselves by looking after the babies by bathing them, drying them, putting talcum powder on, dressing them, brushing their hair and teeth and finally putting them to bed in the cot - we have got such caring children in our nursery.

Term 3's Interest is People who help us and Traditional stories.

This term we have been learning about and discussing what people help us. The children came up with many answers such as firefighter, police officers, doctors and nurses and teachers! The Nursery children have been very excited about this topic and have helped create a doctors surgery and a fire engine where the role play has been so rich and the children's knowledge of what these people do has been amazing. We have had a real fire engine come and visit us too. We were able to sit in the cab, watch the firefighter rescue Mr Phonic Fox, squirt the fire hose and hear the siren. Pictures to follow.

We have also been exploring traditional stories, the children's recall of the story of the Three Little Pigs is excellent. They have been making pig and wolf masks to support role play, they have been challenged to build the best house from straw, sticks or bricks, and enjoyed cooking some piggy pizza faces. So much learning going on!

Term 2

We have been very busy doing so many Christmas activities. We have been to church to hear the story of the first Christmas, we have made many Christmas crafts, made a post office and posted our own Christmas cards. Come and take a look !

Term 2

This term we been learning about the cold, ice and seasons changing. We learnt a lot about what happens in the world around us when Autumn arrives. We have read and learnt from activities related to information books about seasons, "Owl Babies" and "Peace at Last". In these books we have explored animals related to Autumn and nocturnal animals. We have made owl collages and pine cones, hand-print hedgehogs and leaf storms playing parachute games.

Now Christmas is coming and we have some very exciting times and things to do!

Week 5 in Little Millers.

This week we have been exploring the story 'Dear Zoo'. We have been learning to tell the story through our Talk for Writing actions. Also, we have made models of the parcel boxes that the animals came in and used these to retell the sequence of the story in our role play. We have been so inspired by the story and loved learning about the animals that we made model snakes and a tuff spot zoo.

This weeks news in Little Millers...

Jane, Nicola and I are so pleased with the way the children have settled into the nursery. The development and learning of the children has been fantastic! We have done so much, we have made a birthday house linked to the story of Happy Birthday Maisy! by Lucy Cousins, birthday cards, cakes and hats. Using this book we have retold the story with pictures and actions, we are great story tellers!  We have loved playing and exploring in the garden going on number hunts, creating a digging space to make mud pies and we have even jumped into the mud - it was great!

Term 1

This term we are learning about ourselves and that we are all special. This week in our learning we have made portraits of ourselves using a variety of media where we have discussed eye colour, what colour our hair is and how many eyes and ears, etc we have. We have also made some lovely life-size paintings of members of our class and we are starting to think about ideas for our special birthday party role play area as we have been discussing how old we are and what we do when we celebrate our birthday.