Foundation Stage Nursery

Welcome to our class web page, for Nursery 2023-24. We have a lovely class of 28 children, who love coming to school to learn and play with their teachers and friends.

Our staff

In Nursery we work to a ratio of 1 member of staff to 13 children. We have a full-time teacher (Mrs Hanlon) and 3 teaching assistants . The children are also supported over lunchtime by Miss Davison our Reception teaching assistant.

15 hours

We offer morning or afternoon sessions (3 hours) 5 days a week for 39 weeks of the year or we can also offer 2 1/2 full days over 39 weeks. This is either the beginning or the end of the week. Some parents also choose to pay for top- up sessions costing £14 per session (3 hours). A childcare contract must be signed before these sessions can begin. If flexibility is needed please speak to a member of staff as we can usually accommodate.

30 hours

Our 30 hour children access the setting for 5 full days (6 hours per day). To access this amount of hours we must be given a code. You will need to apply for this the term before they start and then reconfirm every 3 months. More information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/30-hours-free-childcare

All children who attend Nursery for full days will need a packed lunch or given a school lunch if requested. A school lunch will cost £2.20 per day.

Session times

Morning– 9am– 12pm

Afternoon- 12.15- 3.15pm

Full days– 9am - 3.15pm

What the children need to bring

Water Bottle: Please provide a named water bottle each session for your child to have access to at all times. We also provide milk or water at snack times and lunch time as well.

Spare clothes: Tops, underwear, trousers/ skirts, socks and bottoms. This is particularly important when your child is toilet training but it is also useful for all children to bring a spare set of clothes in case of getting wet/muddy etc.

Nappies/Pull-ups and wipes: If children are still in nappies for medical/ other reasons we ask that enough wipes and nappies are provided for the day.

Sun cream: In the summer we ask for all children to arrive to nursery with sun cream already applied and if they are staying for a full day session we ask for a bottle to stay at nursery to allow it to be reapplied in the afternoon.

Please ensure all items including coats and jumpers are clearly labelled

Your Child’s Progress

Sharing your children’s progress and achievements are vitally important to us. There are a range of ways that we communicate your child’s progress with you:

Monthly newsletters/ weekly updates
Half termly parent pamphlets- this sets out what we will be learning during that half term
Termly parent/ teacher consultations
Yearly school report
Tapestry– Our Online Learning Journeys: When you filled out your registration forms it would have included a letter about Tapestry and an accompanying consent form. We will create a secure account with the details you provide that enables us to upload photographs, observations and reports relating to your child’s time with us. As a parent this allows you to view exciting achievements via a computer or smart phone.
Open Door Policy: All of our staff are happy to answer any queries or questions during drop off and pick up times. More lengthy meeting can be arranged usually for that week or you can also email and phone us at any time.
Class Dojo - we also communicate to our parents via Class Dojo and this may be little reminders or short messages.

This Years Activities

Autumn 1

Welcome to the first half term of this academic year. We have been welcoming back some of our existing children as well as some new children. The children have settled very well and we have started our new topic 'Me, Myself and I'. We have exploring our classroom and making our own portraits for display. We discussed our favourite colour and recorded it using the ICT tool '2simple'. We have even been on a walk around the local area discussing where we live and the pets we have at home.

Autumn 2

This half term we have started our new topic 'Destination Celebration'. We have been discussing celebrations such as Halloween and Bonfire Night. The children really enjoyed their Halloween disco and talking about what costume they had decided to wear. We have also planned lots of activities for Nursery Rhyme week. We enjoyed linking the songs to different areas of the curriculum. The children worked well in partners to row their own boats.

Spring 1

This half term we have really enjoyed our weekly P.E. sessions. We have been taking part in lots of different warm up games. Our favourite has got to be the jelly game or tag. The children have been great at exploring the equipment safely and working well as a team. We have been climbing over and under and developing our core strength. We have started to practise throwing and catching different resources such as beanbags, balloons and balls.

Spring 2

This half term we celebrated World Book Day. The children were introduced to the book 'Mixed', which was a story about little characters (of the 3 primary colours) that lived in their own little part of the town. One day they decided to mix and new colours were made. We did lots of activities to test out our own colour mixing using paints, water and milk. The children then created their own colour to make a character for their t-shirt, which they wore on WBD.

Summer 1

This half term we have started to practise writing our names as well as starting some pre-writing activities. The children have been really keen to show what they can do. We started by making sure we can recognise and find our name from a small group. We then practised our cutting skills and cut up our names into all of the letters and put them in the right order. We have started to trace our names and some children can form most of the letters independently. We have also being doing lots of phonics to start to prepare to read and write. They love helping the Monsters from Monster Phonics Land to be able to find the objects by orally blending e.g. p-i-g and find the pig. We have now started to orally segment and see if the objects appear on Tricky Witches broomstick.

Summer 2

This half terms topic is called 'Amazing Adventures- Under the Sea'. We have been ready the story 'Barry the Fish with Fingers' and talked about what we can do with fingers. The children loved making finger paintings. The story includes a treasure chest that Barry points so we used this to introduce one of our activities. We hid treasure around the school for the children to find. We started by talking about what could be in the treasure chest and what we might find. We then used the school website to watch some drone footage of the school and the school grounds, spotting all the familiar places. We then looked at a plan of the school and I showed them using ‘x marks the spot’ where the treasure was. We discussed which classroom it was near and how we would get there. The children then led the way to find the treasure and they got enjoy the gold chocolate coins as a reward. This activity then led the children onto being really interested in pirates so we helped the children build pirate ships, make treasure maps, dress as pirates and read lots of pirate books.