Good afternoon all.

The most important news this week is our upset at the fact that many of our lovely pre-schoolers are (sob) leaving us one by one for school. I am particularly sad as my last baby boy is leaving the nursery soon (kind of – the poor child will have to keep popping back for a while yet). Anyway we wish them all a very happy time at school full of lots of friends, fun and learning. We will miss them all.

Please don’t forget our rearranged preschool photo at 2pm on Monday. We need as many of you as humanly possible please and lets all hope for some better weather than last week. We will do it come rain or shine (bar a hurricane) so make plans now if your child isn’t in

Sadly Lottie Payne is leaving us at the end of the month as she is moving to London to be with her other half. We will miss her but we are sure she will be back at some point as we can’t seem to shake her off (joke).

Your weekly blog is up and waiting for you – well you are on the site now so you may as well take a look.

So to give you a little bit more info – for some unexplained reason our server has been blocked from sending out any emails to all you Hotmail and outlook users. Very discriminatory we know but annoyingly it is true. So it is being investigated and reports sent and there appears to be a lot of annoying red tape to go through before it is sorted out. You can send emails to us but we can’t reply, hence putting this update on the site instead. We will let you know when it is sorted out (hopefully it will be just a day or so) but for now group emails will go here. And Hotmail users if you need a reply please call us. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

On the subject of communication please let us know if you aren’t receiving our texts so we can add you to the list.

We have been having a few issues with Hotmail and Outlook accounts because of some block list or other so we are sorry if you have missed …

The annoying boxes in the hallway and around the nursery are actually new sinks for the kitchen and Baboon bathroom. We are replacing them with newer more stylish models and the preschool bathroom will be next. A kitchen refurb is also on the upcoming calendar – we will keep you posted on that. We are also having our baby room carpets cleaned this week to make things a little fresher for our littlest ones.

A few people are asking when we are closed over Christmas. We close at 6pm on the 23rd Dec and re-open on Monday 4th January.

There have been a few comments made about parents swearing on their way into our out of the nursery. Please remember there are children about and they can hear you, but also remember our code of conduct for parents and the team. This is very rare we know but we feel it is better to highlight than not that we would like to keep the place harmonious and polite so please keep your bad language away!

There are a few new policies on the site. The most recent are our trip policy, critical incident policy and our Aims, Values and Principles. We also have some new ‘Team Values’ which were put together with the team and are the ‘harmonious code’ by which all team members are expected to live. They will be on the site too soon and also up in the parent lobby, staff room etc. for you to see.

Many people have very bulky bags for their children’s spare clothes etc. and we are finding it more and more difficult to move. Please could all of you with big canvas things swap them for dainty drawstring or cloth bags instead. The Gorillas are finding the bag situation particularly hard. Thank you.

Please all Gorillas have a rummage and take home all toys of yours in the Show and Tell box – it is overflowing and some of them have been there for donkey’s years.

We are desperate for trousers, pants and skirts for our spare clothes collection. Please think of us when your children grow out of or bored of clothes. Thank you.

Over the next couple of weeks our lucky Gorillas are going in small groups to see some brilliant installations made by Rowland Emett – the group is called ‘The Magical Machines of Rowland Emett’, and they are in museums and galleries stretching Brighton and Hove. They look amazing – from ‘The Exploratory Lunacycle’ to ‘The Little Dragon Carpet Sweeper’ in the Pavilion. Rowland Emett spends his life making these crazy ‘whimsical and wonderful inventions’ – sounds brilliant to me. Anyway the first group has gone to see ‘The Featherstone Kite Flying Machine’ at the Brighton Museum. We have just heard all about the first group going to Brighton Museum where there were 4 installations – they move and play music and are really big and the children were completely amazed. They also saw a moving puppet installation/show and looked at all the crazy chairs by the different designers. They have had a ball. Lovely.

That’s it for this week. Have an amazing weekend.

Your Young Friends Team x