A blog showcasing some of our highlights from 2024 and an insight into CPD for our staff.

Happy New Year!

For the first blog of the year we wanted to recap our 2024 year at Great Wood Farm and also give you some insights into what the staff having being doing training wise behind the scenes over this last year.

We have two stand out memories from the year.  First, was the visit from Rishi Sunak as part of his election campaign along with Rishi Sunak (Prime Minister), Claire Coutinho (Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero) and Gareth Davies (local MP).  It was a wonderful experience and we had both national and local media here, along with a team of police officers for security.  They had a tour around the setting and spoke to children and staff.  At Great Wood Farm we are politically impartial, and when we received an out of the blue phone call, we felt it was a wonderful opportunity to showcase early years in action and was proud to share Great Wood Farm.   We featured in local and national media in newspaper articles and television in the news.  One example in the Daily Mail can be found here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13539185/Poll-Reform-new-high-level-Tories-Nigel-Farage-Rishi-Sunak.html  Secondly, we were proudly awarded the Learning and Education Award through the ‘Excellence in Forestry Awards’, by the Royal Forestry Society, as shared in a previous blog last Autumn.

Throughout the year we were joined by new staff of different levels and abilities and when starting with us we are proud of our induction programme, ensuring all staff are thoroughly inducted ensures continuity and understanding of our Great Wood Farm ethos.  We deliver a training programme through a series of recorded videos and on the job training, as well as core training courses of safeguarding, food safety and paediatric first aid training.  All staff across the nursery complete yearly safeguarding training to keep up to date with new trends.  We ensure that everyone’s paediatric first aid training and level 2 food hygiene is kept up to date and throughout this last year staff have also had access to a variety of other training courses, including safe sleep, epi pen training, schemas, phonics and ADHD awareness training.  Natalie in the office has also completed some staff well-being training and is hoping to further this training this year. In September we had a whole staff meeting and staff meal.

We are continually reflecting on and updating our in house training to support our Nursery Improvement Plan and last year Jess created some maths training for our Kindergarten and Toddler staff to complete, supporting the roll out our new maths programme in the nursery.

Last year we proudly supported six members of staff to complete their level 3 apprenticeship in Early Years and over the coming months we are looking forward to supporting another five members of staff to complete theirs; we are always striving to educate and further the development of our staff. We have also had four members of staff begin their Level 3 Forest School training which are due to complete this summer.

Throughout the year we have also welcomed lots of children from different schools for school trips for a range of topics which include, Forest School activities, lambing visits and Stone Age trips. We have also hosted staff training events through inspire plus for many local schools, educating teachers on woodland skills. In September we also hosted two sleep workshops for our families with the 3am club, one in person and one on-line.

Over the last year we welcomed the families of our children on multiple occasion.  We hosted Grandparents for Grandparent’s day, we also invited Mum’s in for Mother’s Day Afternoon tea, Dad’s in for Father’s Day breakfast, we invited parents/carers for an Easter Egg hunt, Harvest Festival, end of term Kindergarten production and Christmas productions too, as well as opening the Nursery for a stay and play session and two open days. We have really enjoyed welcoming new and upcoming families to our baby group each Friday morning where we have explore so many different activities and resources.  We also raised money for different charities and organisations including fundraisers for our late deputy manager Zoë who sadly lost her battle to cancer late last year.

Last year we introduced ‘Makaton Monday’ to help to promote Makaton throughout the nursery and also for families to join in with them at home, we have also enhanced and extended lots of our environments which you will see on our ‘environment spotlights’ on social media, we have been very busy on our social media with our book of the months, meet the team and more!

Overall the year 2024, bought us as a nursery so many opportunities for staff and child development.  We cannot wait to see what 2025 has in store for us, we are already looking forward to the room movements planned with our new extension in our Kindergarten foxes room and our new staff room and we have lots more planned!