Last day at nursery

It's not actually that long ago that Danny was a pre-schooler with little care in the world.  Now he is a big boy at big school.  Our lives have changed so much over the past few months.  One of the best things about Danny's nursery experience is that he had a soul mate.  It's so nice when a feeling of friendship is mutual.  And with Danny and Isla it most certainly was the case.  It's a real pity that they won't be going to the same school but hopefully we can still keep their friendship alive!

Not a day goes by that I am not thankful that we made the right choice for Danny's nursery education.  He flourished under Mrs Stride's care, she really is a wonderful teacher, treating each child as an individual.  The teaching assistants (Miss Walsh, Lina and Anja) were so caring and loved Danny to bits (but who wouldn't love such a sweet little character).  Looking back now the nursery chapter of Danny's life is a wonderful memory!

Mrs Stride

 Miss Walsh

Lovely Lina

Anja

I got Danny to design a card for Mrs Stride's present and I must say I was shocked and impressed with the end result.  I promise it was all his own work!  I loved it so much I printed a few cards which we used for all the teachers.  I also took a photo of his message in the inside as a record of his handwriting at the time!

The front of the card

The back of the card

Danny's message to Mrs Stride

Mrs Stride always sang Danny's praise.  She brought the best out in him and gave him an excellent foundation for starting school.  She always made such a big fuss about his show and tells, not only how interesting his objects were, but also how impressed she was with his ability to talk about them in front of the whole class.  She also noticed that he was ready to start reading quite early on and so she started him on a reading scheme way back in April.  All this gave him a bit of a head start and a lot of confidence so I will be forever grateful to her!

Collecting earth worms for his spring show and tell
(it just takes a bit of prompting to come up with something interesting)

  

Reading one of his first books
(Top Cat by Julia Donaldson in the Songbirds reading scheme)

The nursery was divided into two classes: the older half (butterflies) and the younger half (caterpillars).  Most of the children progress from caterpillars to butterflies but because Danny is so young in the year he didn't make that transition.  There were also two sessions a day, one morning and one afternoon, some children did one or the other and some did both.  Danny only ever did mornings.  So not all the boys that moved on to Donhead from Ursuline are in this photo but in total there are about 16 of them out of 44 that came from the same nursery.  So many familiar faces can only be a good thing!

The class photo
(that I didn't buy, hence the poor quality)