Betty completes The Dog Mentor training
Lesley and Katy successfully completed their Dog Mentor training programme and our lovely school dog, Betty, has now been assessed as suitable to work with the children at Hoyle Nursery.
We are very excited about Betty now being able to work more closely with our children, as many studies have shown that providing children positive experiences with dogs can help them educationally, developmentally, emotionally and socially.
Donating to Chesham Food Bank
A big Thank you to everybody who donated food during our Harvest collection week. The children took all of the donations up to Chesham Food Bank this week and the staff there were overwhelmed by your generosity.
Harvest Stay and Play
We had our first stay and play of the school year today and it was fantastic! We had such a great turn out, with so many parents staying to join in with our scarecrow themed session. First we sang our 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow Song' , which our wonderful Sue from Kidsrock played along to with her guitar. Then we said a scarecrow rhyme before building our amazing scarecrows. We were so impressed with all of the unique creations.
A big thank you for all of the food donations which we will be delivering to our local food bank next week.
End of Year Party
The children and staff from N2 and N3 celebrated a fabulous year at Hoyle with a special party day. We had lots of dancing, balloons, glitter tattoos, a Kids Rock session, a yummy outdoor dinner and even an ice cream van!
Then it was time to say our goodbye's to some of our children and families as they leave us to move onto big school and to say goodbye to others until September.
Have a fabulous Summer everybody!
Class of 2024 - Our Leavers Celebration
This year for Graduation, we planned a wonderful informal celebration over in our Forest School. Parents and other family members joined us to celebrate the children's time at Hoyle, before they leave us to begin their new journeys at 'big school'. The children had learnt a lovely song, which was introduced to us by Kids Rock Sue, called 'We are Family'. We all sang along and signed some of the words. Then the children did a traditional folk dance with lots of audience participation. There was an opportunity for crown making using our beautiful wild flowers. We had strawberry scones and Victoria sponge cakes. Finally the children took turns in sitting under our beautifully decorated arch to be awarded with their learning journey from Rachel.
We would like to wish all of our leavers good luck for the future. We have loved being part of your early education and watching you all grow. We are so very proud of all that you have achieved. Do come back and see us and let us know how you are getting on.
N2 and N3 Nursery Sports Stay and Play Sessions
This year, we had a move away from a more traditional 'sports day event', where the audience comes to sit and watch, to a new 'Sports Stay and Play' with lots of opportunities for parents and children to take part in physical challenges together. There was a whole range of activities to complete including a penalty shoot out, ladder climbing, duck racing, balloon popping, skittles and sacks (to name a few!) Everybody had a great time and we had lots of positive feedback from parents who felt this type of event worked really well. Thank you to all who attended and for taking part so enthusiastically.
Leavers Trip to Smithills Farm Trip
We had a fantastic day at Smithills Farm in Bolton for our leavers. We went on a coach, had a donkey ride, had a tractor ride, played on the park, held chicks, bunnies and guinea pigs, saw lots of different animals in the fields and pens, enjoyed a packed lunch and had an ice cream. As you can see from our photos we had so much fun but it was quite exhausting. Look how many sleepy children we had on our return trip.
The Euros Football Themed Stay and Play
As there is currently lots of excitement around the UEFA European Football Championships, we organised a special football stay and play. We invited our Dads, Grandads and other special people to come along and put their football skills to the test. We were all very impressed by the goal scoring, dribbling and ball control that we saw. Well Done to all the came to take part. We hope the England Team do as well as you all did!
World Music Day
We held a stay and play, led by our fabulous music teacher Sue from Kids Rock, to celebrate World Music Day. The theme this years World Music Day was 'Unity and Inclusivity' Sue definitely brought us all together through the universal language of music. Sue brought us a selection of songs from around the world, so we could celebrate together the importance of music in people's lives.
A huge thank you to Sue for her wonderful selection of songs and to all our parents and carers that were able to stay and take part.
The All-Day Farm Visit
Wow! What a fabulous day for our N2 and N3 children. We had the opportunity to meet so many different animals, big and small. We brushed the horse, stroked the guinea pigs and rabbit, saw 3 goats and 2 lambs and even held a snake!
D-Day 80th Anniversary
Hoyle Nursery have been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944. We created our own boat, made flags, made a big piece of art work and set up a small world area with boats and soldiers. We also had a special D-Day lunch which all the schools in Bury were having that day.
Our Sensory Room
We are so lucky at Hoyle! Two of our Nursery parents volunteered to paint our Sensory Room, ready for the installation of some fabulous new resources. It looks absolutely amazing in the lovely new deep blue colour. The children are really enjoying using our freshly painted room and all of the new calming lighting.
Look how big our ducklings have grown....
The staff and children at Hoyle couldn't believe how much our ducklings grew and changed after their weekend away with Kirsty and her family. This week we have loved watching them swim in a water tray.
Sadly, they have now gone back to the farm but we have got lots of lovely memories of their time with us at school.
Lambs visit Nursery for the day!
Lamby, Taylor and May are 3 beautiful, 4 week old lambs, that came to spend the day with us at Hoyle. We were able to give them lots of cuddles and bottle feed them with their milk. Many thanks to Lisa from the farm for letting us look after them for the day.
Duckling Names
Our 5 little ducklings have now been named. After pulling the names from a lucky dip, we are proud to announce we have named them - Wispa, Oreo, Twix, Yorkie and Rolo.
International Day of Families - Different Families, Same Love.
To celebrate a special day of families, we had an amazing day sharing lots of photographs sent into school of our families, reading stories about families, drawing family portraits and creating a huge collage of our 'Hoyle Family' handprints. Our collage is now hanging in our community room for all to see.
A big thank you to all the families that were able to attend our special Stay & Play event and to those that sent in family photographs.
Ducklings!
The children (and staff) were so excited by the arrival of 5 duck eggs at Hoyle. The eggs hatched very quickly became 5 beautiful ducklings. The children have been fascinated watching what has been happening, from the very first cracks appearing in the egg shells to the 5 fluffy babies we now have. We have had lots of cuddles with them this week and next week they will be big enough for some swimming, which we can't wait to see.
Sue, our Kids Rock teacher and her new puppy
Sue brought Marley, her beautiful puppy to see us all at Nursery. Marley got lots of strokes and cuddles and was very well behaved.
Presenting our fund raising cheque to Bury Hospice
Here we are with our giant cheque which shows the fabulous £105 we fund raised for Bury Hospice with our Bunny Hop and cake sale.
Hopping for the Hospice.
To raise money for Bury Hospice, all the children iced cakes and biscuits for a cake sale, made bunny ears and then had a bunny hop. We had lots of hopping fun and helped raise some much needed funds for a local hospice.
Thank you to everybody that came along to buy cakes or biscuits. We raised a fabulous £105!
World Art Day
World Art Day falls annually on the 15th April, the same day as the birth of world famous artist Leonardo da Vinci. We had a vey creative day at Hoyle, celebrating world art. We did some splatter painting, painting with sticks, some transient art and painted with a palette knife. We investigated the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Goldsworthy and Jackson Pollock.
Easter Egg Hunt
The Easter Bunny visited Nursery and left lots of chocolate coins in our outdoor area for the children to find. We had lots of fun discovering where the chocolate was hiding and then even more fun when we got to eat it!
Surprising our local residents!
We decided to spread some Easter joy and happiness to some of our local residents by surprising them with some lovely daffodils. It was so nice to meet our neighbours. When we walked back to school we could already spot some of the flowers we had delivered in the windows as we past.
Our Visit to Bridge House Care Home
We were invited to go and visit Bridge House Care Home to sing for the residents. We had a lovely time and some of the residents even sang songs of their choice for us to clap along to. Thank you for our Easter biscuit treat and the kind donations to our tombola. We would love to come back to see you all again soon.
On the walk back to school we spotted a truck collecting a skip full of garden rubbish. The children enjoyed watching it being lifted up with the big heavy chains.
Our Visit to Brookdale Care Home
After our lovely visit to sing for the residents at Christmas time, we returned to sing some lovely Spring/Easter songs for them. Thank you to Brookdale for the lovely welcome you gave us and for donating Easter treats to our tombola and egg hunt at Nursery. We hope to come to see you all again in the Summer Term.
World Wildlife Fund - Earth Hour
Saturday 23rd March at 8.30pm is Earth Hour
We have been contributing to Earth Hour/Earth Day at Hoyle by giving 60 minutes of our time back to our planet. We turned off our lights for 30 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon. We also went litter picking on Chesham Fold Road. Look at all the litter we collected!
Why don't you try to give the planet 60 minutes of your time over the weekend?
Wear Something Silly - Red Nose Day
To raise money for Comic Relief, we invited the children and staff to come to Nursery in something silly. We saw lots of crazy outfits including odd shoes, odd socks, tutus, onesies and lots of clashing colours! The children also enjoyed trying on Rachel and Katy's pink wigs!
Thank you for all of your donations which will be sent to Comic Relief.
Mother's Day Stay & Play at Forest School
Wow! What busy sessions we had for our two Stay & Plays! It was fantastic to be joined by so many mums and other special people over at Forest School. Everybody made beautiful floral art work before sitting down at our picnic tables to enjoy juice and strawberry scones. Did you notice our table cloths? They were made by our children especially for this event.
We hope everybody that attended enjoyed their session.
Happy Mother's Day for Sunday!
World Book Day
We had a wonderful World Book Day at Hoyle. Children (and staff) wore their pyjamas and onesies for a day filled with storytelling and book sharing. We read stories at group time, in provision and even in some dens we had built outside. What was your favourite story from throughout the day?
Staff Forest School Training
The staff at Hoyle had a very interesting INSET day when Janine Neville, an outdoor session facilitator, came to lead a day of team building and collaboration games, craft making and wellbeing work. As you can see from our photographs it was a very wet and muddy day but we did not let that dampen our spirits! We came away with lots of exciting new ideas to use with the children and a deeper understanding of the principles and benefits of using Forest School.
Thank you to Janine for a inspiring day.
Valentine Cakes
The children in N2 and N3 decorated lots of cakes and biscuits for our Valentines cake sale. Thank you to all who bought something from our stall as all profits go directly into school funds. Thank you.
Gong Hei Fat Choy!
We had a special stay and play today for Chinese New Year. Lots of the children were wearing red as it is a lucky colour in Chinese culture. We sampled lots of delicious Chinese food. We made clay dragons, paper lanterns and had a go at some Chinese writing. We also created some music to accompany some dragon dancing that we watched on the screen using chopsticks. We had lots of fun!
A Visit to Space Centre, Preston
A group of our children went for a fabulous trip to 'The Creative Space Centre' in Preston. It is the largest multi-sensory Centre in the UK, providing sensory support using state of the art lighting, visuals and sound equipment to create a fully tailored sensory experience. As you can see from these fantastic photographs, the children had a wonderful time while they were there.
NSPCC Number Day Stay and Play - A Number Themed Tales Toolkit Story
Today we held a NUMBERTASTIC Stay and Play. We started both the morning and afternoon sessions with a Tales Toolkit story.
In both stories there were 5 characters (lots of opportunity to count, recognise and order numbers). The morning children named the character Lilly and the afternoon children named her Katy.
The setting bag had a party picture and 5 plates and 5 cups. Both groups decided it was a birthday party for Lilly/Katy.
The problem bag had 4 of each party treat – milkshake straw, crisp packets, flapjacks, Twix – the children carefully set out the food items onto each plate, each time counting from 1. They realised each time they were one short and the poor birthday girl had an empty plate and cup (Der! Der! Der!)
The morning children solved the problem with a witch who said “Abracadabra! You must share or I will freeze you with my wand”. The afternoon children solved the problem with Santa who stole all the food from party guest number 4 until one child said “Why take it all?” and quickly moved some food across plate 4 and 5 so everybody had food.
What fabulous storytelling!
Thank you to our parents that attended today's sessions. We hope you enjoyed our stories too.
National Story Telling Week
As part of Story Telling Week, we created a special Tales Toolkit story which involved lots of our favourite story characters, including Elmer the Elephant, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Fox. Katy wore a special book character dress - which characters can you spot?
RSPB Big School's Birdwatch - Walk to the woods Stay and Play
As part of this RSPB event, we took the binoculars that we had made up to the woods for some bird watching. On our lovely walk we saw lots of different birds including robins, pigeons, blue tits and a jackdaw. We left out lots of seed for the birds to enjoy after we had returned to Nursery. Thank you so much to the parents that were able to join us on our walk.
Thank you for supporting our School Christmas Fair
Hoyle Nursery would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of the local companies and businesses that supported this years Christmas Fair with their extremely generous donations. We couldn't have done it without you!
Donations included food and drink for our cafe, beautiful gift hampers, gift vouchers, free passes and lots of wonderful items that we were able to use on our stalls and raffles.
Thank you so much to Yearsleys, Financial Options, Morrisons, Dunsters, Bookers, Rayburn Trading, Company Shop, Aldi, Keryi, Olde Sweet Shop, JD Gym, Racconto Lounge, The Pack Horse Birtle, Jack's Chippy Radcliffe, Body Shop, Millie's Cookies, Alfreds, Vue Cinema, Hollywood Bowl, The Entertainer, Coffee and Cream and Smyths.
Nursery Christmas Party
We finished the year with a fabulous Nursery Christmas party. We had dancing, games, balloons, glitter tattoos and even a visit from Santaceptor.
Christmas Dinner
We had a fabulous roast turkey dinner as part of our festivities in Nursery. Thank you so much to Jackie and Jack for cooking our delicious Christmas meal.
Our visit to Brookdale Care Home
We visited Brookdale Care Home to perform our Christmas songs to the lovely residents. They enjoyed watching us perform and singing along to our songs. We hope to visit them again soon.
Our Christmas Performances
This year we decided to try something new for our Christmas singing. We created a little Winter Wonderland in our outdoor area, complete with 'snow', fairy lights and even a campfire. We all got festive in our Santa hats whilst we sang a selection of Christmas songs. There was lots of audience participation throughout and then things were rounded of by toasting marshmallows on our fire and drinking hot chocolate. A huge thank you to Sue who accompanied our songs in all 7 performances with her guitar. We hope you all enjoyed our festivities as much as we did.
Merlin the Magician
The children in Nursery had a very exciting visit from a magician. They really enjoyed meeting his puppets and watching his magic tricks. Some children even helped with the magic tricks.
Cakes for our Christmas Fair
In preparation for our Christmas Fair, the children iced biscuits and decorated buns to sell on our cake stall.
Thank you to all who donated items to our fair and attended the Fair. We raised a fabulous £450 for school. Thank you for your support.
Road Safety Week
This week we have been learning how to cross the road safely. We went on a walk and found different types of crossings. We listened very carefully to our teachers and crossed over to the other side. We also made our own zebra crossings.
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World Nursery Rhyme Week
This week we have been celebrating 'World Nursery Rhyme Week'. Each day we have been singing and signing a new rhyme, we used Nursery Rhyme props to create a Tales Toolkit story and N2 had a Nursery Rhyme themed 'Stay and Play' for parents.
Children in Need
The children have enjoyed supporting 'Children in Need' today by bringing in a donation, wearing their pyjamas to school and taking part in lots of Pudsey themed activities. Thank you for all of your donations.
Remembrance Day
N2 and N3 have been busy completing lots of poppy activities to help them learn all about Remembrance Day. We have been weaving, printing, using play dough and exploring the red rice tuff tray. The children also bought a poppy from the poppy box.
Bonfire Night
N2 and N3 children have been talking about all the fireworks they have seen over the weekend. We have been busy creating firework collages, glitter patterns and breadstick sparklers.
Pumpkin Patch
Our children and parents had fun finding Pumpkins in our Forest School Pumpkin Patch. We then explored scooping out the seeds and carving faces onto the Pumpkins.
Wonderful Spooky Walk
Our Wonderful Spooky Walk was a very wet and windy walk today but it didn't stop us from having fun. We wrapped up warm put on our wellies and went off into the park to play chase the ghost, splash in as many puddles as we could find and we even sang our Pumpkin song. We then went back to Nursery for a well earned hot chocolate and ginger biscuit.
We would like to thank all our families for raising sponsor money for our walk. So far we have raised £200 which will go towards some new resources for our outside area.
World Mental Health Day
World Mental Health Day is an important day which raises awareness about mental health matters. The children in Nursery 2 and Nursery 3 have been using a book called 'The Colour Monster' to talk about different emotions that we feel. We then focussed on the yellow colour monster which symbolises happiness. We did some colour monster paintings, danced with our 'happy sticks' to some very happy music and made yellow handprints.
Harvest Food Donations
This week the children from N2 and N3 took all of your wonderful donations from our Harvest festival to our local food bank. The donations were gratefully received. Thank you for your generosity and support.
Harvest Celebrations
We would like to say a great big thank you to the Mayor of Bury Cllr Sandra Walmsley, James Daly MP and our parents for joining us to celebrate our Harvest Festival. The children sang some lovely Harvest songs and then we all joined in making Scarecrows to decorate our wonderful Forest School area. We hope to see you all again soon.
Smithills Farm
The rain didn't stop us from having fun on our recent trip to the Farm. We took all the children who are due to leave us to start school in September and had a wonderful experience exploring all that the Farm had to offer. We had donkey rides, tractor rides, watched the cows being milked, met all the animals up close and personal and even held some of them.
Forest School - 'Stay & Play'
All Day Farm Visit
This week the farm visited school and set up their pens on our carpark. There were Guinea Pigs, Rabbits, Goats, Lambs, a Shetland Pony, Chickens and a Snake. The children learnt about the different animals, fed them, brushed them and held them.
Space Trip
We took some of our children to The Space Centre in Preston. The centre is the largest multi-sensory environment in the United Kingdom and is a truly amazing experience for all ages.
Our children were able to explore, run, jump, swing, slide, shout, dance and express their wonderful individualities in a safe and exciting environment. As you can see from the photographs below, our children and staff had the very best day!
Africa Day
We celebrated Africa Day in Nursery with our children and parents. We learnt about the continent of Africa and explored world maps, made necklaces inspired by the Samburu Tribe, explored African animals, discovered African arts and crafts - printed on materials and used clay to make models, tried the exotic fruits from the book Handa's Surprise, explored African Music and learnt a song and a dance. Thank you to the families that joined us celebrating this special day.
King Charles III Coronation Celebrations 2023
We invited our parents in to join in with some special workshops to celebrate the King's Coronation on Friday 5th May. The children and staff dressed in red, white and blue and we decorated the school with bunting, flags and balloons. We were greeted with the special arrival of our three ducklings which we aptly named Charles, Camilla and Kate. The children explored what a Coronation is and produced lots of lovely crafts such as crowns, medals and painted pebbles. We also planted seeds, made birds feeders and created music to a selection of nursery rhymes and songs such as The Grand Old Duke of York, London Bridge and The National Anthem. We ended the session with a Royal Picnic for lunch. Thank you to all that joined us.
Earth Day 2023
The children have been learning about Earth and the world we live in. They have explored mixing different colour to create a picture/collage of the world, looked at different globes and found countries, the sea and space, talked about the ocean and how to keep the ocean safe and clean to protect the ocean and the sea life, looked at books and found different countries and talked about the importance of recycling.
Below are some photographs showing some of the activities that we did on the day.
Happy Easter
The children have enjoyed finding chocolate Easter Bunnies which were hiding in our outside area, learning new songs and a super dance which involved 'freezing' like a statue. We invited our parents for a Stay & Play session where we made chocolate nests, decorated eggs, made play dough chicks, Easter egg collage pictures and did an Easter bonnet parade.
Forest School
Our new Forest School is now up and running. We are still developing the area but our children have really enjoyed exploring the area and helping with design ideas.
We would like to thank:
- John Holt Architects for his help supporting our planning application.
- Andy Humby and his team at Cocklestorm Fencing for doing a brilliant job making the area secure and safe.
- Miller's Vanguard for supplying the pallets.
- Dave at Heap Fold Farm for donating some large Tractor Wheels.
- Haworths for kindly donating some lengths of wood.
- Tom Prescott of TP Tree Care for donating some tree logs.
- Woodland Trust for donating fruit trees and hedges.
Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process that offers opportunities for holistic growth. It supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands on experiences in a natural setting. I'm sure that by looking at the photographs below, you will see how much our children love learning outside.
We celebrated Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit. We tasted Chinese food, explored different ways of writing Chinese letters, made dragons and rabbits, danced to Chinese music and made our own music using drums and chop sticks. Thank you to all our parents for joining our celebrations.
Christmas Fair - Wednesday 30th November
Thankyou to everyone who supported our Christmas Fair, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Christmas Fair Donations
A BIG thankyou to all the local businesses who were so generous in donating food, money and raffle prizes to our Christmas Fair. Without them it would not have been the great success that it was. We raised an amazing £433 for School fund and we can not thank you enough for your kindness. Also a big shout out to Brent and the Santaceptor team and Bury Fire Service. You were amazing and the children loved seeing you.
Yearsleys - donation of burgers, sausages, chicken nuggets, bread, cakes and doughnuts. These were delicious.
Millars Vanguard - 100 selection boxes for our Santa presents.
Crown Oil - £150.00 donation
Financial Options Group - 5 luxury food hampers
The Company Shop - Food
Pizza Express (Bury) - Meal for 2
Racconto Lounge (Bury) - Meal for 2
Smyths Toys - £50.00 of toys for our raffle
Morrisons (Heywood) - donations of chocolate for our Chocolate Tombola
Tesco (Bury) - Hamper
Jungle Mayhem - 2 x play and eat vouchers
Beau Teaful - Afternoon Tea Voucher
Nando's (Bury) - Sauce hamper
The Entertainer (Bury) - £15.00 voucher
B&M Bargains (Crostons Road) - Discount on our purchases
IN4TECH - Raffle prize
Courtney (Parent) - Elf donation
Christmas Fair Donation - Friday 11th November
We have received a very kind donation from Crown Oil in Bury to go towards making our Christmas Fair extra special for the children. We are extremely grateful for their generosity and it was lovely to meet Liz when she came to Nursery to present us with a cheque for £150.00.
EID Celebrations
Thank you to our parents who helped us celebrate Eid. We decorated biscuits, made moon and star mobiles, had henna designs on our hands and listened to music. We enjoyed the celebrations.
Global Recycling Day
The children enjoyed learning all about recycling materials and looking after our local area. We made some fabulous robots out of different used materials, planted seed bombs and went out litter picking.
Support for the Ukraine
Showing our support for Miller's Vanguard as they set off on the 3000 mile round trip from Bury to Suwalki in Poland to deliver much needed supplies to the Ukrainian refugees.