Easter Newsletter 2021

We are writing to share several pieces of exciting news and also to ask for your help!!

First, the much anticipated ‘Ruach Project’ (Phase 1) is scheduled to begin on 19 April 2021 and will continue for 15-16 weeks, completing during August 2021. (More information can be found here: http://www.poppletonmethodistchurch.org.uk/ruach/

For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, Ruach is a building project which will provide the Methodist Church with a fabulous new hall in the current garden space. Poppleton Under 5s will move into the new hall from September 2021.

This is very exciting for us for lots of reasons, one of which is that it will increase the number of sessions we are able to offer our families, as other church hall users will be able to use the old hall while our pre-school sessions are running. Currently we are considering setting up new Rising 5s sessions for our older children to help prepare them for their transition to school and we will be back in touch about these plans in due course.

In the summer term, while the building project is underway, we will lose access to the existing garden and so after Easter we will be constructing a safe and secure outdoor play area on the grass area at the front of the church. This will enable our children to continue to enjoy access to the outdoors during this brief transition period.

The second piece of exciting news is that toddler and baby groups are permitted to restart after the Easter holidays and so we are looking forward to getting back together with our parents of younger children.

At the moment we cannot restart our traditional Popp and Play session, partly due to the fact that the garden will not be available and partly due to the continuing problems around Covid-19, but one of our parents is setting up an outdoors group which will meet at the Millenium Green in Nether Poppleton on Friday mornings under the name “Little Friends of Millenium Green”. If successful we hope this group will continue year round and that our usual Popp and Play session at the Methodist Church will also restart from September 2021. Please keep an eye on our facebook page for further updates and for a link to book onto the new group.

Which brings me onto our request for help!

We have offered to work with the Methodist Church to develop what will be the new outside space and garden area and have lots of great ideas which we are putting down on paper. We will be consulting with various groups in the community about how they may want to use the space and also of course with you! So as current users of the outdoor area at the Church, please do chat to your children about what they like about the outdoor space and also about what else they might enjoy, so we can feed your ideas into our wish list. We will be back in touch on this.

Helen Williams (who worked on the village playground development in 2017) will lead on a longer term project to raise grant funding to then put the joint wish list into action, although this will obviously take a bit of time.

So, a shorter term project is to quickly raise sufficient cash funds and resources to create a space which is immediately usable by our children when we return in September, and from which we can then build up the longer term development.

Again, we will be back in touch with the details of how we plan to do this, but it looks like it will be a busy Summer Term at Poppleton Under 5s, as we look forward to these exciting new developments.

If you have any questions, please do email us at pu5committee@gmail.com or contact Anne on 07957 815596.