Nursery

Nursery

Welcome to Homelands Nursery

Nursery teachers are Amy Smethurst and Helen Birks.

Claire Hawkes is our nursery nurse.

Miss Braford is a higher level teaching assistant and is in the class every other Wednesday morning.

Click here to take a look at our 'welcome' video.

Today we went to the sensory room and the library for the first time with Miss Bradford and Mrs Hawkes.

Week starting the 25th of September and the end of last week. Please also scroll right down to see the older pictures at the bottom of this page.

Please take the time to look at these websites:

Speech and Language UK.

Smartie the Penguin- using the internet safely, a guide for young children.

Make Time to Play website.

Family Maths Toolkit.

Small Steps Big Little Moments

Please click on the PDF for important information about reading and sharing books.

book-sharing-at-home.pdf

Please click on the PDF to see our vocabulary list for this term.

nursery vocabulary for the Autumn term

Please click on the PDF to read about this term's topics.

topic overview

Story Time

Click the link to see Mrs Birks telling the story of the '3 Little pigs'.

Click the link to see Mrs Smethurst reading 'We're going on a Bear hunt' by Michael Rosen

Click the link to watch Mrs Smethurst reading Benjamin Zephaniah's poem called 'Poetics'

In Nursery we encourage and support children to become confident and independent learners. We provide a rich learning environment which encourages a high degree of autonomy so that children can quickly learn to be responsible for their own learning and can plan and organise their time. We believe that children should be allowed to develop at their own pace. The needs of each child vary and we cater for them as individuals.

Nursery is the first class of the Foundation Stage. Foundation stage is a vital part in your child’s ongoing education. A positive start to school, where a love of exploration and learning is fostered, sets children up for a love of learning as they continue their education journey. We work closely with parents and carers to develop a partnership between home and school in order to share together the importance of these early years in your child’s education.

Nursery starts the term after your child is three and continues until they start the Reception Year of primary school. We work closely with the Reception Class and share a large outside space. The Foundation Unit as a whole contains two large classrooms, a spacious outside area, a kitchen and toilets. We also benefit from having a small cosy room within Nursery where we have our class library and reading area. This small room is also used for group work. In addition the children have the opportunity to access various spaces throughout the wider school grounds; hall, cooking room, the field and the nature garden. The nature garden is often used by us for additional outdoor learning opportunities and has a pond and woodland areas.

You may think that children are ‘just playing’ when you see young children in Foundation Stage. However, if you look more closely, you will see that a whole world of learning is happening. We carefully plan playful, purposeful activities to suit the needs and interests of the children, in order to support them and to help to move their learning forward. Young children are ‘active learners’ and the experiences that we plan enhance the all-round development of the child. We want all children to feel valued as individuals and to be successful achievers in a safe, secure, nurturing environment. Spontaneous learning opportunities are recognised and extended by the teacher as they occur. Through play, and with the support of adults in class, children explore and discover new ideas, skills and concepts.

What most children are expected to know and understand during the Foundation Stage is set out in the government’s

Early Years foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS). The curriculum is organised into 7 areas of learning.

Communication and Language
Physical Development
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive Arts and Design

For more information on any curriculum matters please see a member of the Nursery Team or refer to your prospectus.

Rain or shine, our outside environment is open for the children to explore. The outdoors is a natural teaching and learning environment and is where most children feel settled and capable. Outdoor teaching and learning is as carefully planned, just as it is indoors. The only real difference between the indoor and outdoor curriculum is that the outdoors provides children with the opportunity to work on a much larger scale and to be more physically active.

The practitioners in Homelands Nursery are Mrs Smethurst, Mrs Birks, Mrs Hawkes, and Miss Bradford.

Most of all, all members of the Nursery team, want your child to have a happy, positive and exciting experience. We want their day to be filled with purposeful play, making friendships, learning, developing and lots of fun!