Nursery

This half-term our topic focus is “Traditional Tales"

Sue Radley Nursery Teacher, Sarah Blunt and Claire Dixon Nursery Practitioners

Class 1 Information Pages Spring 2023

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Circle time: activities will support the children with learning how to express their emotions, share their opinions and consider how others maybe feeling.

Cooperative games: the nursery children will be supported to play simple cooperative games, where they will begin to understand the need to follow rules.

Mud Kitchen Garden – the nursery children will grow plants and seeds and continue to provide food for the birds.

Communication & Language

Topic activities this term these will develop the children’s vocabulary as they name and describe what they see from hearing stories, poems or music and participating in activities, visits or investigations. They will be encouraged to say and use words and develop their knowledge and understanding from direct experiences.

“Show and Tell” sessions will encourage the children to share their ideas using items or information from home, linked to the weekly theme.

Physical

Forest School – weekly sessions on Wednesday morning will be led by Mrs Blunt, who is a trained Early Years and Forest School practitioner.  These sessions are vital for developing and refining the children’s large and fine motor movements, and crucial for the development of the neural system. The children need to wear the correct clothing to keep dry and warm, and this will be sent home after every session for cleaning.

P.E. - sessions will be led by staff in the village hall and this term the children will have the opportunity to use the gym equipment to explore how to climb, balance and move in different ways.

Mathematics

A variety of play activities both adult-led and for free play will be planned for the nursery children this half term linked to the Reception weekly focus. These activities will give them opportunities to develop crucial skills required for counting such as sorting, matching and comparing.

Literacy

Letters and Sounds Phase 1: the nursery children have sessions which focus on the different aspects of Phase 1: rhythm and rhyme, environmental, voice and instrumental sounds, alliteration, oral blending and segmenting. In sessions they learn how to listen, discriminate and copy sounds and patterns, and to segment words into individual sounds or blends sounds together to make whole words. Activities include games, songs, instruments, the use of I.T.  with CD players, tablets and IWB.

Our phonics scheme is changing this term to a scheme very closed matched to Letters and Sounds called, "Success for All".

Reading : A love of books and reading is encouraged in nursery by reading and sharing stories with the children, having a weekly library choosing session and termly visits from a storyteller.

Writing: in our play provision the children have access to a variety of mark making equipment and experiences planned by the Early Years Team.

Our writing area will also have resources linked to our topic focus to encourage independent writing, in particular writing about Winter festivals.

Knowledge & Understanding of the world

This half-term our topic focus is “Winter”.  We will identify the seasonal changes we can see in Winter and Winter festivals.

Walks & Visits: We will be going on walks around the village to explore the rural landscape, and observe changes at two local small holdings and on Farmer Ford’s farm from a safe distance, following any current regulations.

Investigations: We will be walking around our local area identifying plants and animals.

I.T. : our topic focus will be supported by the use of lap tops and tablets and the IWB for on-line activities and video clips.

Expressive Arts & Design

Sketching: this term we will encourage the nursery children to draw using a variety of equipment looking closely at Winter changes.

Model making:  the nursery children will be guided in how to make dough and bread.

Role Play : This half term we will be supporting imaginative play with our small world farm toys and role play area creating snowy and Arctic scenes.

Music: we will be learning nursery rhymes connected to the season of Winter, using percussion instruments to accompany them. We will also listen to music which links to growth and change.