Early Years - Nursery & Reception   

Welcome to Early Years! We have 3 experienced teachers, Miss Pateman, Mrs Stagg and Mr Lester, and are also supported by our fantastic team of teaching assistants. We have a huge learning space to explore and make the most of every day, spread across three classrooms and our outdoor area. We split into smaller groups with specific adults for parts of the day, and learn through a mixture of adult-led and child-led learning.       

Home learning ideas:

  • We use Tapestry to share work that we have done in school and share ideas for learning beyond school. Speak to Miss Pateman if you're not sure about how to log in.
  • Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read. 
  • We have daily phonics sessions which follow the ReadWriteInc scheme. They have lots of guidance on how you can support your child with phonics at home here. 
  • Go to places where you can see or meet different animals - the park, pet shops, woodland, friends with interesting pets… What animals can you see? Do you know all of their names? What sort of things do they like to do? Can you find out what they eat or where they sleep? There are loads of questions to ask, and it’s fine to not know all the answers (understanding that you don’t know is definitely a Learning Superhero skill!)  
  • There are lots of resources to support learning around traditional stories available on the Oak Academy site - try starting with the The Three Billy Goats Gruff set of lessons, which you can find here. 
  • We’ve been practicing our counting a lot in class, so building on this at home would be a huge help - you could count houses on the way to School, footsteps on the way to bed, shoes in the house, players on the team, objects in the shopping trolley, claps, nods... Anything and everything you can think of!
  • Support your child in building their imagination and storytelling, building things using big cardboard boxes and pieces of fabric, or dressing up and pretending to be nurse, doctors or parents.  
  • Have a go at some of the fab art activities on the Tate Kids site: www.tate.org.uk/kids/make

Our latest news:

  • This term has been an exciting start to the year as there were many celebrations and religions to learn about. We had a fantastic time learning about Black History Month, Diwali, Halloween and Christmas.
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  • We were very lucky to visit two special places this term. Ladybirds enjoyed a day at Church Farm, while Butterflies travelled to Herrings Green Farm. Ladybirds explored all the farm animals and learnt new facts from the farmer Jill. They also collected eggs, fed the farm animals and helped to plant new seeds. Butterflies saw a variety of owls and even got to hold one. We also watched a flying show and were able to meet other animals such as rabbits, tortoises, goats and snakes! 
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  • We have loved our Talk for Writing story this term, which was Owl Babies. We thought of and wrote new words to describe the owls, created our own owls using different media and materials and even created our own story maps to re-tell and innovate on the story. 
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  • We have absolutely loved sharing our Tapestry journals this half term! It has helped develop our speaking, listening and communication skills. In class, many of us have been really excited to share what our parents have been putting online, and this has also helped our development. We also enjoy talking to our friends about what has been put online via the app and this has helped develop and strengthen friendships and connect us through common interests and experiences. 

"The planning of the early years curriculum is strong. It links closely to the curriculum in other year groups and provides a secure foundation for children s future learning.

Ofsted report, 2022
We have been learning about... 

Child Initiated Learning - we have had the chance to try out a huge range of activities linked to learning, our own individual interests and our focus story, Whatever Next. As a result we have developed and widened our friendship circles, enabling us to engage with our environment and improve our speaking and listening skills. Many of us have made fantastic progress because of this. We always look forward to finding out what new activities and challenges have appeared in our classrooms each day and are also keen to find new ways to explore, use and play with the equipment and resources around us.

This term's topics

Communication & Language - This term we will be developing our use of conjunctions whilst speaking, using words like and, when, if and because to link our ideas together. We will also work on using the past tense correctly to talk about things that we have done. We will be listening to a range of animal poems as well as reading and acting out our core story, Dead Zoo - and this, in turn, will introduce us to lots of new vocabulary, using words like fragile, heavy, fierce, danger, grumpy, habitat and perfect. We will also continue to develop our wider vocabulary through circle time, Word of the Day and lots and lots of talking!

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - This half-term we will be meeting our next learning superhero, Ralph Reflectiveness, whose powers are planning, reviewing, evaluating and revising. Linked to our learning around animals we will be discussing how we should treat and care for animals, and then putting this into practice in our pet shop role play area. 

Physical Development - In our weekly sessions with Mr Butler we will continue to work on spatial awareness, finding space, moving towards and away from each other, and travelling and stopping with control. We will continue with our Dough Disco and daily Funky Finger Challenge to support the development of our fine motor control. This will then support us in improving our handwriting and scissor skills, so we can draw, write and cut precisely!

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.