St Philip's Marsh Nursery School

Zoolab Springtime Road Show visits School

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:33:32 +0000

The ZooLab Springtime Road Show visited the School. It has been specifically developed for nursery age children to learn about lifecycles and the beginning of new life.

The children had the opportunity to look at, learn about and handle (if they wanted to) a wide range of creatures, including snakes, lizards, snails, crabs, rats and toads! You can look at ZooLab’s website at www.zoolabuk.com

Take a look at our gallery to see what creatures we enjoyed learning about.

Nursery wins Evening Post competition

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:48:58 +0000

A huge thank you to Sarah Hamilton (Mary Sophia’s mum) for nominating us for a competition run by the Evening Post where five Bristol schools won trees for their grounds. The trees were donated by Western Power Distribution and pupils planted them with help from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. The children thoroughly enjoyed planting rowan, apple and pear trees in our orchard. To see further details and the photo, please click here.

Mrs Burt retires

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:25:19 +0000

Helen Burt (Class 2 teacher) has retired after working for 30 years at the Nursery. What an amazing achievement!

During her last week with us she has enjoyed a tea party for Class 2 in the Family Room and a sing-a-long for the whole school where she was presented with tokens of our affection.

The Evening Post visited the School to interview Mrs Burt. To read the interview click here

She has been a wonderful teacher to hundreds of children and a good friend to many parents and staff. She has been Creativity and Literacy Co-ordinator. Amongst many other things, we will miss her wonderful singing. We all wish Helen a long, happy and healthy retirement.

3rd Photography Exhibition – Wendy’s selection

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:37:09 +0000

Photographer Wendy McMurdo has selected two photographs from each class. Click here to check them out or see the display in the Foyer.

5* Food Hygiene Award

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:30:53 +0000

Congratulations to Marilyn, our cook, and Val, our kitchen assistant, as the kitchen at St Philip’s Marsh Nursery School has been awarded the 5* Good Hygiene Award. This coveted award was issued by The Food Safety Team at Bristol City Council.

3rd St Philips Marsh Nursery Photo Exhibition

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:43:39 +0000

We are very excited to announce that we will soon be unveiling the 10 pictures which will make up our 3rd photography exhibition.

As you know, photography is a very important part of our school life, the teachers use it to document the children’s learning and we encourage all the children to take pictures as part of their creative expression and to help them think about what is going on around them. It is a great way for children to recall and review what they have been doing.

For the last 3 years we have asked a professional photographer to curate our exhibition. This year we have asked Wendy McMurdo. Wendy is a Scottish photographer whose work has been the subject of documentaries for BBC2 and Channel 4. She is currently developing pieces which look at early explorations of self. Wendy’s work is very different from ours, but capturing children’s play and their early exploration and learning is a theme we share.
You can find out more about Wendy and see some of her work on her website http://www.wendymcmurdo.com/

We sent Wendy approximately 50 photos, 10 photos from each class and the Family Room. These photographs were taken by staff and the children. From this selection of 50, Wendy has chosen 2 from each class, which will be exhibited in the reception area of School shortly after half term.

You can view all the pictures we sent to Wendy in our online Gallery.
When the pictures are exhibited, you can see if you agree with her choice.

And please remeber to tell us what you think of the pictures!

Bristol in Bloom Award

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:41:18 +0000

In September, Pat and Simon attended a ceremony at the Council House where we were awarded the Bristol in Bloom Learning Through Gardening Award. The ethos of the competition was to encourage children’s awareness of their “natural” surroundings with a hands-on approach to learning.

The award can be seen in the foyer.

You can see the full list of winners and the reasons why the judges voted us the winner by clicking here

Bristol Standard award

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:44:49 +0000

We would like to say congratulations to Sharon, Charmaine and Mr Holmes who have been instrumental in the school gaining the Bristol Standard for the school and Froglets.
This award is a self-evaluation framework to help individual settings to improve on their previous best. It involves working together on developments to improve outcomes for all children and families and takes a year to complete.
In using the Bristol Standard, practitioners become part of a process that protects and celebrates the wonder of childhood through well-informed and reflective practice.

The validation group were delighted that the school and the Froglets after school club worked so closely to provide exciting opportunities for the children’s play and development. They felt that our schools commitment to supporting all the parents to feeling involved in the school community was inspiring and commented on the dedication of our staff to our children and their families.

Gold Medal for our garden

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:24:10 +0000

We are very proud to announce that we have won a gold medal in the Bristol In Blooms Learning through Gardening competition and with a score of 87% we are the overall winners of the competition.

The judges commented that “The whole school ethos and and the involvement and enthusiasm of the staff team is reflected in the garden. The curriculum is planned to integrate all the children’s activities both inside and out. Everywhere the school has created learning experiences, opportunities and lovely adventures for the children which is followed through in the classroom. We were particularly impressed with the creation of a beautiful peaceful wildlife garden to commemorate a much loved school caretaker Tony.

The standard and maintenance is excellent and we saw the young children busy watering the flowers. We feel this outside space is an oasis in the heart of an industrial estate.”

2nd St Philips Marsh Nursery Photography Exhibition

admin — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:57:57 +0000

As you know we love photography in this school, so after the success of Martin Parr’s selection we have asked the president of the Royal Photographic Society to follow in his footsteps and curate our 2nd exhibition.

The Royal Photographic Society was founded in 1853 to promote the ‘Art and Science of photography’ a mission it continues to this day. To find out more about The Royal Photographic Society click here.

How do we select the pictures for the exhibition? Each class chooses their 10 favourite pictures taken by their own class. This gives us 40 pictures in all which we send to our guest curator. They then choose 2 from each class. These 8 become our exhibition. We get these printed and hang them in reception.

All the prints will be available to buy. Just ask Mr Holmes.
All the money raised by the sale is put towards the next exhibition.

Click here to go to our gallery and view all the pictures and see if you agree with the final selection on display in the reception area.

Here are some quotes from parents:

“Brought tears to my eyes. Amazing. Very moving and powerful”.

“I love them: both in scale and content – so much nicer for being natural and unstaged. They show the great relationship that teachers at St Philip’s have with the children …”