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Our Nursery Pre-School Curriculum
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 topics this term are ‘LIFECYCLES’ AND ‘JOURNEYS’.
Our Role Play area will be transformed into an amazing 'Garden Centre' designed and built by the children themselves. Mrs Bate visited a local Garden Centre and made a video for the children, showing them the sorts of things we would find there. We will watch this together and make a list of what we need ....and then make it! We will add to the role play as the half-term progresses, reflecting their learning and building upon their understanding of growth and living things. We will create lots of rich writing and mark making opportunities, as well as areas for your children to plant seeds, design and make their own seed packets and use garden tools.
We will begin by reading and learning 'Jasper's Beanstalk' by Nick Butterworth and learn the sequence of growing a beanstalk. We will even plant our own seeds too! We will then read and learn 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle, exploring the lifecycle of a butterfly and acting out the story together. In RE, we will be learning about 'Special People' in the Bible and talk about some of the miracles of Jesus we read in the Bible.
After half term, we will work together and make our role play into a Bear Cave, before creating a school classroom together, in preparation of our transition into Reception Class in September. We will incorporate many opportunities for mark making, writing, phonics and music within our role play, learning one of our favourite stories, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen, off by heart. We will then explore 'The Flying Bath' by Julia Donaldson , talking about journeys together. We will also enjoy reading the traditional tale, 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' Our RE topic will be 'Friendship' and we will be looking at 'The Rainbow Fish' by Marcus Pfister and exploring and talking about different ways we can be kind.
Please look at these stories and songs together and talk about what is happening with your child? You could ask questions like, 'What did you like best?' or 'Can you remember what happened in the story?' Children love acting out stories and you could each take on a different character. How would that character move? How would it speak? Your child will really enjoy learning with you and this will really help support your child's learning in nursery.
We will continue to teach our FOUNDATIONS TO PHONICS,(see below) alongside the intentional teaching of mathematics following the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. We will also continue our very popular 'Helicopter Stories' and 'Word Aware' sessions, which are great tools to aid your child's creativity, improve their language skills and help enhance personal, social and emotional development. We teach maths intentionally and in small groups, supported by 'Sarah Martin Consultancy' and the NCETM. We use Numicon to help support our teaching of number and for ideas of how to support with Numicon at home, click here.
Teaching in Nursery
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 FOUNDATIONS FOR phonics, enhanced by EY2P materials, Word Aware and Helicopter Story sessions.
Our teaching of 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.
Supporting at home
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:
We hope you find them useful!
How to strengthen little fingers at home: video 01
How to make playdough at home: video 02
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!
Ideas of how to use playdough at home: video 03
Remember to use both hands, using language like squeeze, pat, twist, splat, roll. Why not watch dough disco too!
How to build a den: video 04
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?
