20 hours a week including Sundays and Tuesday mornings.

This role is designed to be flexible and can be term time only, term time with a few weeks in the holidays or all year round.

Salary £27,000 - £30,000 (Pro rata, dependent on experience)

Informal visits and discussions welcome. Please contact Juliet Dellow

If interested in applying please download the Job Description and Application form.

Closing date for applications: 9am Friday 8th May

Interviews: Wednesday 20th May.

This role holds a Genuine Occupational Requirement for an active and committed Christian faith.

St Matthew’s Church is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. All post holders and volunteers are expected to share this commitment. The post is subject to acceptable pre-employment checks including an enhanced DBS check.

If you have children in this age group, we would be very pleased to see you. We have a wide and varied range of activities to support your child's development. We serve good coffee and cake, and there are always people to talk to whilst the children play in safety. For more information ring the St Paul's Children's Centre on 0117 903 0337 or St Matthew's Church Office.

We would always appreciate prayer and welcome anyone who would like to get involved. Please do speak to those already involved if you would like more information.

The preschool playgroup takes children between the ages of two and a half and five and operates in the large church hall with access to extensive garden space.

We offer free places to all three and four year olds and some funded places for two year olds. Our sessions are available on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 8:15am-4.15pm and we are open for 38 weeks a year as we follow the school term times. For other shorter hours during each day please contact the playgroup. Our current sessions are 8:15-4:15 (full day), 9:00-3:00 (school day) and 8:15-1:15 (morning only).

Funded 15-hour places are available for all 3-4 year olds. Extended funded hours are available for working families of 2-3-4 year olds. Ask us about applying for 15 hour funded places for eligible 2 year olds.

St Matthew’s has a committed, well qualified and enthusiastic staff team and we always operate a more generous staff/child ratio than the statutory requirement. In addition we encourage parents and carers to stay and help for occasional sessions on a rota basis. We value enormously our partnership with parents and operate an ‘open door’ policy at the beginning and end of the day so that there is always the opportunity to discuss matters of mutual interest or concern.

When children first join the group parents and carers are welcome to stay and help to settle their child into the routine for as long as they feel is necessary.

During the sessions we offer a wide range of exciting resources and activities and provide well planned playful experiences in a caring and stimulating environment, both indoors and outdoors.

We are an inclusive community where all children and their families are welcome and valued and where children feel safe to explore their world, pursue their interests, be adventurous and creative and develop their social and language skills as they learn and play alongside a highly qualified and experienced staff team all of whom have the children’s well-being at the heart of everything they do.

We believe that the best way for parents and carers to discover whether St Matthew’s is appropriate for them is to come and visit us during a session.

If you think we might be the place for your child please telephone during playgroup hours and ask to speak to Linda so that we can discuss availability and arrange a visit.

Contact details: playgroup@stmatthews-bristol.org.uk or via the Church Office during Playgroup hours.

King’s Kids is every Tuesday morning 9:30-11:30am in St Matthew’s Church for story time, playing, snack and singing. We provide a safe and fun environment where children can play freely and parents and carers can meet.

We look at different topics each term and explore the Christian faith through stories and crafts. Once a term we take the group up into our worship space where we share a special story time and singing.

We are keen to build relationships in the group, so regular attendance is encouraged, but we also recognise that life can be busy!

For more information, do please get in touch with our Children, Families and Youth team

Here are activities on Sundays—see the community page for other groups that happen through the week.

Children & Families

Sunday Club

Sunday Club runs alongside service (or more accurately underneath in the hall) at 10.30am. All children below the age of 11 are welcome with younger children accompanied by parents as you like. Feel free to join in with the activities or make use of the many toys we have. We have fun exploring Christian Faith together through games, Bible stories, crafts and whatever else we can think of and if that wasn't enough we have access to our fabulous garden.

Youth

Youth meets term-time on Sundays from 6.30pm where the whole building is exclusively ours. We get to hang out together, discover the ultimate hiding spaces or kick back on the sofas and find out what our friends have been getting up to. We finish up with a meal and thinking about how Jesus is relevant to everything we do through the week. In this spirit, many of our group also take the opportunity to volunteer to serve in a variety of ways on a Sunday or raise money for some of our mission partners. We try and get away for an annual weekend, usually in September.

If you have any questions please do email the Children, Families and Youth team