New Building Arrangements
Contact Details
The new address of the Pre-School will be:
Warborough & Shillingford Pre-School
16 Thame Road
Warborough
WALLINGFORD
OX10 7DX
We will have a landline for telephone calls: 01865 859933.
As under the current arrangements, if you have to leave a
message that may impact on the safety of your child please always leave a
number so that staff can confirm that they have received it. It will also be
possible to get a message to us via St Laurence School but, please, don’t
trouble them unless it is a genuine emergency.
Accessing the Pre-School
The new Pre-School is the green building at the left-hand
(north) side to the rear of St Laurence Primary School. Outside of school hours
(8:50-15:00) it is possible to gain access by walking past Class 1. During
school hours, please use the “yellow brick road”, which starts from the cycle
racks and diverts you around a hedge, to avoid distracting any older siblings
in Class 1. Please be very careful to shut and lock all gates behind you. We
will leave the front door unlocked so that parents and children can wait in the
lobby if they arrive early. All internal doors are protected by separate
keypads so it will not be possible to enter the main hall until the session
starts/finishes. Please can all pushchairs be left outside the building – we
will be building a sheltered buggy park near the back of the shed, although
this may not be in place immediately after half term.
Session Times for Term 6
Morning sessions will run from 9:00-11:30 and lunch club
from 11:30-12:30. Prices will remain at their current levels before rising to
£2.50/hour in September. The current plan is to start by running the same
session fifteen minutes earlier. We would ask parents to please ensure that
they arrive as punctually as possible. Circle time will start at 9:15. Any late
arrivals will have to wait in the lobby until it has finished (approximately
fifteen minutes). We are considering running lunch club every day if there is
sufficient demand – please could you return the slip at the bottom of the
letter from Nikki.
Uniform
Please can you provide a pair of indoor shoes for your
child. These could be any type of shoe: slippers, plimsolls, trainers, ‘proper’
shoes as long as they are kept for indoor use and are not likely to cause
accidents. For example, slip-on shoes (with no backs) or novelty slippers are
not suitable. We are in the process of ordering crested polo shirts (in red) to
make the staff readily identifiable (no pun intended!). We will be adopting red
as our Pre-School colour (with a gold logo to reflect our waspish heritage) and
whilst the wearing of uniform will be optional, we would encourage parents to
purchase polo shirts and/or sweatshirts from Pre-School. This will allow staff
to easily distinguish between Pre-School children and those from St Laurence’s
during shared activities. Samples should be available in school soon.
Working with St Laurence’s
The advantage of having the Pre-School on St Laurence’s
site is that we can easily share facilities and resources in a reciprocal
arrangement, as well as easing the transition for children moving up to big
school. Much of the negotiation will need to wait until our new supervisor and
the new Class 1 teacher start in September, but we have already had a brief
meeting with Nancy Townsend. She has been very generous in offering us use of
the school playground to allow the children to continue to have a large tarmac
area on which to ride their bikes. She is also trying to sort out the logistics
with Benson to allow us to offer Pre-School children a hot meal at lunchtime.
In return, we expect to host some of the Foundation Stage children in Class 1
for carefully planned shared activities. These children will number around six
at any one time and will be accompanied by a Teaching Assistant. Similarly, we
may adjust our morning routines to allow some shared break time with St
Laurence’s with the free flow of children between the two areas. Please be
assured that we will carefully monitor these arrangements to ensure that the
safety, happiness and learning opportunities of our Pre-School children are
never compromised.
Official opening
Our local MP, Boris Johnson, has agreed to perform the
official opening of the building at the end of the school day on Friday 14th
September. We shall be holding our own unofficial opening at the Open Day on
Saturday 23rd June, to be performed by someone well-known to us all
who jointly founded the Pre-School around 40 years ago (in the cricket pavilion
on The Green). We would welcome any help that parents can offer if you are free
on this day.
Leavers
As many of you will be aware, new children in Class 1 at
St Laurence’s do not start school until the Monday of the second week of term.
All new children attend from 9am – 12 noon for this second week. Those that are
rising 5s then attend from 9am – 1pm for the third week, before starting full
days in the fourth. (Younger children remain at 9am – 12 noon until the term
they are rising 5s.) As well as being able to take children who have only
part-time places for the afternoon, the Pre-School is happy to offer parents
the option of additional childcare for the first three weeks of the Autumn term
for those children who will be (eventually) full time. We can provide care from
9am – 3pm for the first (part) week, 12 noon – 3pm for the second week and 1pm
– 3pm for the third week to fit in with the primary school’s hours. If you are
interested in putting your child’s name down for this then please speak to
Nikki. Note that you will be required to pay £2.50/hour for this care, as the
child’s funding will have been transferred to the school.
