Recent updates to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) emphasise the importance of providing healthy, balanced, nutritious meals to support children’s growth and development. At Pollington Preschool we encourage healthy eating to not only protect children’s health but to lay the foundations for their future well-being. As a setting we provide nutritious foods for all meals and snacks, avoiding large quantities of saturated fat, sugar and salt and artificial additives, preservatives, and colourings with many of our meals being plant based. The early years are a key time for starting these habits; therefore, we want to give you as much knowledge and information as possible to ensure we are all making those healthy choices!

Tiny tummies, Happy lunches!

Preschool lunchboxes don’t need crisps, sweets, or sugary treats to be exciting—real food is already magical! Little bodies grow best on fresh, simple foods that give them energy to play, learn, and shine all day! With a little colour, a little balance, and a sprinkle of fun, you can turn every lunchbox into a happy surprise!

Why a Healthy Lunch Matters 

Preschoolers are busy bees - running, learning, playing, exploring. A good lunch helps them: 

-Stay energised all day 

-Stay focused, calm and happy 

-Grow strong bodies and minds

-Enjoy food without needing sugar or additives

-Build lifelong healthy habits and learn to love good food early on

Think of lunch as fuel for fun!

What makes a Super Lunch? Try to mix 3–4 food groups for energy that lasts all day:

Energy foods – mini sandwiches, wraps, pasta

Fruits & veggies – apples, bananas, berries, carrots, cucumbers

Protein power – eggs, cheese, hummus, wholegrains Dairy – yogurt, cheese, milk (or alternatives)

Packed Lunch Tips

-Small portions work best

-Cut food bite-size

-Colourful food makes eating fun

-Water is the best drink to support oral health

We believe in creating healthy eating habits to support children’s physical and dental health! Our children have free access to fruit and vegetables throughout their session. Children don’t miss unhealthy foods when they’re offered tasty, colourful, wholesome meals. By packing healthy lunches, encouraging children to try new foods, drinking water (which are all modelled by our tribe in setting), teaching them about food origins, how they look, taste, smell we help them build strong bodies, happy habits, and a love for real food!

Healthy food = happy tummies + happy moods! 

Mutual Respect and Tolerance form an integral part of the British Values embedded in everyday practice here at Pollington Preschool. These principles help our little ones learn to treat others with kindness, appreciate individual differences, and respect a wide range of cultures, faiths, and beliefs.

Within our setting, the Tribe is confident and skilled in planning activities and encouraging conversations that nurture Mutual Respect and Tolerance. Children are supported to talk about differences, celebrating them together as part of our wonderfully diverse community.

Mutual Respect and Tolerance also help create inclusive environments where each child’s unique qualities are recognised, valued, and supported. For children with additional needs or those navigating a SEND pathway, it is especially important that stigma is reduced, and a strong sense of belonging is fostered. This, in turn, helps to uphold Individual Liberty and Expression. Our Conflict Resolution approaches empower children, particularly those who experience big emotions, to communicate their feelings, use their words, and access regulation strategies that help them to stay safe and feel understood.

At Pollington Preschool, we are committed to ensuring every child thrives and that their wellbeing flourishes. Our Tribe members champion these British Values not only to reduce prejudice and discrimination, but more importantly, to cultivate a community where acceptance is the norm and differences are joyfully celebrated.

World Book day is upon us again, giving us the beautiful opportunity to showcase how we delve into exciting adventures, through the use of words and pictures.  Stories, for little minds, give us all licence to imagine, feel and celebrate new knowledge and re-visit old knowledge, this is especially exciting for our children.  On this super special day, immersed in the wonder of World Book Day, it is vitally important for fuelling passion for learning, creativity and increasing knowledge for children across the world-made all the more exciting with the opportunity to be that character for the day!

Children that are exposed and encouraged to foster a love of stories and books at a young age, (even in the womb) show increased brain activity in the areas critical for developing communication and language development.  As one of the main areas of learning, children need to be able to communicate and open the doors of awe and wonder for imaginative opportunities themselves as a basis for life-long learning.  Children who immerse themselves in the love of a story regularly with an interested adult are statistically more likely to engage better and make more progress in their schooling journey of reading and creative writing.

Sitting together and sharing a story, a physical book in the hand is so important for fuelling a child's interest.  Going to your local library and choosing a book together to read is super exciting and secures the value that is placed on books. Re-reading that familiar book over and over again is often frustrating for us as adults but for a child they are re-visiting the love that is felt when the story is shared with you!  Being totally immersed in a book, it's a wonderful place to be! 

Soooo slow down, make the time to sit down and take a look, let yourself get lost in the awe of a book!

WE love WORLD BOOK DAY so much so that we’ve had a full week of immersing ourselves in our favourite story- this year our tribe have gone elephant crazy and looked at everyone’s favourite patchwork elephant Elmer! All our children have been surrounded by love and warmth through colourful activity, exploring the many concepts in the story through play

World Book Day can often be misunderstood as a parent’s opportunity to showcase their own ability for their child to come dressed in the best costume.  Parental pressure to perform can often showcase some of the most amazing costume efforts from home, so a big well done to those parents!  However, whether a homemade costume where little hands have helped or shop bought it doesn’t really matter for the children as the importance of experience is further deep rooted as they begin to immerse themselves in the character of a favourite story.  The opportunity to be someone or something different is exciting!

By dressing up, children explore feelings of belonging and culture, a sense of community envelopes them as they participate in a day of celebration together. The opportunity to dress up and explore feelings of pride, sometimes shyness and even embarrassment gives the children a truly unique experience and for most children year on year this grows into something special as they begin to relish preparations for the day, excitedly planning who they want to be the next year. Their opportunity of creative growth is beginning. 

Being able to participate and identify as a character enables the children to explore their imaginations and begin to make links creatively, super important for creative thinking and writing and being able to identify and understand parts of their own personality traits with fictional and non-fictional characters. 

This year we have focused our world book week with the use of props and physical development.  We didn’t ask our children to dress up specifically as we didn’t want to put our families under pressure and often for very young children they refuse to wear the outfits anyway.  However, many of our children have enjoyed wearing bright colours and our community feeling began right here, as we made links together between the similar colours everyone was wearing and the patchwork elephant.

Our football class with KIXX has supported our physical development this week, as links to early handwriting are secured in good physical development.  The use of props in our story telling support the children in their imaginative narratives, as they see the characters in the book come to life. Making coloured paper clip chains have supported problem solving and early number and we have done so much more.

It is fun for young children to dress up but what world book day really brings is the community together.

We find our own place in the community and begin to understand how we are all truly unique on days like these-just like Elmer!

 As such a forward facing profession you could be forgiven for not understanding the hard work and dedication that goes on behind the scenes by our tribe. Every term we sit and make plans that support elements of safeguarding, staff development and children's development and working with you guys parents to support our goals in supporting all children to make the best progress.  Many of these include having high expectations for our staff team.

Did you know that we follow the Early Years Foundation stage guidance, which gives us a set of values that we can work towards and inform our practice. Some of these values are statutory and others are a well-could be good practice to do so situation. 

One of these values is regarding First Aid Training.  Did you know it is only statutory to have one qualified first aider on the premises at any one time? 

Well not at Pollington Preschool, our educators and tribe are all expected to complete a 12 hour Paediatric first aid course as soon as they join our team- woo hooo!!  The health and well-being of our children is paramount at all times and we believe that all of our tribe hold this life saving qualification.  All our educators are qualified to deal with accidents and injuries and manage the associated reporting procedures to safeguard the children whilst they come to play.

So we are proud to announce that in November,  the second group of our educators completed Paediatric First Aid Refresher training, with PROFirst Aid Training.

Congratulations and thank you to our dedicated team of Educators on your achievement!!

A well-thought out children's environment is always lovely to see, whether it is colourful and organised or natural and calm it doesn't matter as long as the children can make their choices of play, to build upon what's there as instruments of their learning fascinations.  Walking into our preschool is always filled with joy and delight for so many and today, it was lovely to see that some of the tribe had been in over the weekend and had transformed some of their cosy spaces. 

Once upon a time, early years trainers used to say that a change in the environment was all very distracting and confusing for the children. Often using the example of how frustrating it is when you go to the supermarket and the products on the aisles have changed, dismayed at the amount of time it takes to complete your shop after this transformation until you get to know the 'new' layout- this is what the children would feel also. For many years, thoughts about truths of this in the preschool environment and the negative impact have been considered however, what about the positive effects? After years of reflecting with our tribe it has forced considerations of this frustration and enable us to find a positive shift in opinions for us.

 Today is a day that we at preschool dread.  Every year it gets harder and harder to let our ‘Adventurer’s’ leave our place to belong.  We spend all year having the MOST exciting adventures together in anticipation of this transition time. We grow and learn together as we prepare to ultimately watch them get ready to set sail ‘into the unknown’ and their next set of adventures.  Each and every-one of them leaving an imprint on our hearts.   

As a staff team we work tirelessly to ensure that every day is a new adventure and then worry that ‘we’ are not ready to wave our goodbyes. Usually this final term is jam packed full of events to cement everlasting memories for our children that will hopefully last a lifetime…
…this year it is particularly difficult as our tribe feel cheated by all the missed time together that the last few months has brought and with it worries- are the children ready?

As a lead and manager,  I am passionate about legacy and ensuring that we leave the right ‘footprints’ in the heart of our children, it does sound a little contrived but the simple fact is that WE as early years educators have one of the most important jobs alongside our children’s parents. 
It is usually at this time of year that we get to see the impact of our work through the reams of data, the transition meetings with local schools and most importantly from the children themselves as we measure their developmental changes and the impact that we have had.
However, as I watch these amazing Adventurer’s confidently walk through our doors for their final sessions, even after having such a large gap in their time spent with us- I realize the true impact that we have had. 

At Pollington Preschool, we are all about community. We are always totally absorbed in teaching our children how to just ‘be’. Yes we do all the twiddly bits that our early years curriculum requires but essentially a large focus for us here is supporting the children to- 'be' resilient, 'be' kind, 'be' confident, 'be' themselves. We aim to support strong values (supported by parents at home of course) ready for them to conquer the next chapters of their learning.

As we do this we often get consumed in the fun, glitter and general day to day rhythms. We live through the highs and lows of our families with them. We immerse ourselves in preschool events together, we laugh at our performances together and cry at our goodbyes. Sometimes it is honestly so easy to get submerged in our little community bubble that it is easy to forget that there is anything outside of the school boundaries at times.

We work hard to support our own identities and individualities and hold strong beliefs that our children are taught about themselves, their family values and the meaning of our community together and how they fit diversely into this and the world around them in their own unique way.