Welcome to Nursery Class Page

Spring 2025

WELCOME BACK TO NURSERY

Nursery staff would like to wish you a warm welcome back to school. It has been wonderful to see all the pupils wearing their uniform with pride and greeting friends and staff with happy smiles, kind words and good manners. We had a wonderful previous term and cannot wait to continue learning together this spring.

NURSERY STAFF

If you need any support or would like to discuss how we can best work in partnership to support your child in school, we are always here to help. Your class teacher is always the first point of contact, followed by Mr Gilroy as EYFS Lead. For any advice on special educational needs, it may be appropriate, after speaking with the class teacher, to also contact Mrs Whitehead, who is our school Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENDCO).

Smaller queries can often be answered at drop off times, however for more private conversations, or those that may take a little longer, please make an appointment by discussing this with the teacher or calling the school office instead.

Please be advised that collection time is a very busy time, and not a time when we can give you our full attention.

Mrs Gillin -Nursery teacher

Mrs Condliffe Nursery Nurse

ATTENDANCE

Good attendance and punctuality are vital, not only for learning, but also to help pupils settle into their new school routine, make friends, and grow in confidence.

Our classroom door opens at 8:30am and the gate closes at 9:00am. If you arrive after this time, please enter via the main entrance. The gates will open at 11.15am and close promptly at 11:30 am.

Spring Curriculum Coverage

English	Week 1 The Gingerbread man Week 2 The Three Little Pigs Week 3 Chinese Newyear/ Goldilocks and the Three Bears Week 4 Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Week 5 Little Red Riding Hood Week 6 Jack and the Beanstalk. Daily name writing. Squiggle While you wiggle Week 7 The Extraordinary gardener Week 8 Olivers Vegetables Week 9 The amazing life cycle of Plants. Week 10 Sam plants a Sunflower Week 11 The Tiny seed Week 12 Lulu Loves flowers
Maths	Develop fast recognition of up to 3 objects, without having to count them individually (subitising). Recite numbers past five 2D and 3D shapes. Patterns. Size and length Make comparisons between objects relating to size, length, weight, and capacity.
Phonics	Phase 1 phonics Voice sounds Oral blending and segmenting Alliteration Body percussion/voice sounds. Instrumental sounds and Rhythm Rhyme.
RE	Celebrating Gathering Easter
Understanding the World	Winter States of matter. History Old and new toys’ Geography Maps and routes Spring Growing Life Cycles
Communication and Language	To encourage children to express a point of view. Children can start a conversation with an adult or a friend and continue it. Children to use talk to organise themselves and their play.
Expressive Arts and Design	To encourage children to draw with increasing complexity and detail, such as representing a face with a circle and including detail. Children show emotions in their drawings and paintings, like happiness and sadness. Begin to develop complex stories using small world equipment like animal sets, dolls, and doll houses.
Personal, Social, Emotional Development	To encourage children to show more confidence in new social situations. To develop appropriate ways of being assertive and gradually understand how others might be feeling.
Physical Development	Use one handed tools and equipment making snips in paper. Use a comfortable grip with good control when holding pens and pencils. To become increasingly independent as they get dressed. Children to skip, hop and stand on one leg. To be able to hold a pose for a game like musical statues.

Phase 1 phonics

Phase 1 phonics concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in the next phase. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.  

The activities introduced in Phase 1 are intended to continue throughout the following phases, as lots of practice is needed before children will become confident in their phonic knowledge and skills.

Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects:

Aspect 1 – General sound discrimination – environmental

The aim of this aspect is to raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested may include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game, and making shakers.

Aspect 2 – General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children’s awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 – General sound discrimination – body percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children’s awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 – Rhythm and rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 – Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 – Voice sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities may include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot’s mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice – /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 – Oral blending and segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Class messages…

Your child’s clothing, bags and bottles should all be labelled with their names.

We kindly ask for a £1 donation per week to help to cover the cost of snacks.