Cinnamon Brow CE Primary School

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and in particular, we focus on the three Prime areas as we believe these are fundamental in forming a broad and balanced base from which all children can learn. These areas are, Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED), Physical Development (PD) and Communication and Language (CL).  The EYFS states that these three areas are 'crucial for igniting children's curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and to thrive.'  

We design an active and experiential curriculum, helping to develop each child's confidence, resilience, self-esteem and celebrating their uniqueness.  Please see the 'Welcome to our Nursery' page for more information.

Our Role play area will become a beautiful picnic area at the beginning of term, where we will display photographs of our children on their summer holidays. They will have the opportunity to sit together and chat, making new friends, surrounded by photos of their families and people who are special to them. We will be talking about what different families look like, including occupations and will turn our role play area into a vets later on during the first term.

We will begin by reading 'Happy to be Me' by Emma Dodd and 'The Colour Monster' by Anna Llenas, learning how to express our feelings in different ways and exploring our wonderful bodies and how we move. We will then read 'Pete the Cat' by Eric Litwin, singing and learning Pete's song together, learning about colours and how to have resilience when things don't always go our way! Our RE this term will be Harvest and Noah's Ark, and we will be celebrating and exploring God's wonderful creation together.

After half term, we will begin by reading 'Walter's Wonderful Web' by Tom Hopgood, learning about the different shapes as Walter spins his webs in all shapes and sizes. We will then focus our attention on the changing seasons and explore 'Tap the Magic Tree' together, taking us up to learning all about the Nativity story from the Bible. Our God songs this term will be, 'My God is so BIG' and 'Jesus loves me this I know,' along with our Christmas carol, 'Away in a Manger.' Our role play area will change from a shape shed after half term, to a stable just before Christmas. 

It would be wonderful if you could look at these stories and songs with your child and talk about them together.  You could ask questions like, 'What is your favourite part?' or 'Can you remember what happened in the story?'  Children love acting out stories and plays, so why not dress up as characters from the story together and talk about how they would move, speak, etc. Your child will benefit hugely from you taking an interest in their education!

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS) and also intentionally teach early phonics and maths each day.  We also introduce new concepts, language and vocabulary through our Helicopter Story and Word Aware sessions. Please see our long term plans for more information.

In Nursery, we teach early maths and phonics in small groups each day.  We follow a broad theme for each half-term (see our long term plan), guided by the chidlren's interests and needs, prioritising their communication and language development through quality interactions and opportunities for imaginative play. We follow Little Wandle Phase 1 phonics, enhanced by EY2P materials, Word Aware and Helicopter Story sessions.

Phase 1 phonics consists of seven interlinking parts, which are all vitally important to help your child develop their speaking and listening skills:

1) environmental sounds

2) instrumental sounds

3) body percussion

4) rhythm and rhyme

5) alliteration (words that begin with the same sound)

6) voice sounds

7) oral blending and segmenting

We will be giving you details of how you can support your child's learning, including an invitation to our parental phonics workshop, later on in the year.

There are many ways you can support your child's learning at home.  We have put together a series of little videos to help support you with your child and have produced some documents to help you (see below). 

You can also find useful ideas at:

CBeebies at home

Hungry Little Minds

Tiny Happy People

We hope you find them useful!

INGREDIENTS:  2 cups flour (any type), 1 cup salt,  1  1/2 cups warm tap water,  2tbs cooking oil,  a few drops of food colouring (optional).

Why not add a bit of spice to your dough by adding cinnamon, ginger or glitter? Enjoy making this together!

Remember to use both hands, using language like squeeze, pat, twist, splat, roll.  Why not watch dough disco too!

Making dens is a great way to help develop your child's magination, as well as exercise their gross and fine motor skills.  You can use chairs, clothes maidens/airers and even large boxes to make castles, ships and forts.  What will you create today?