Welcome to Nursery!
Our classroom is always busy and full of stimulating resources and activities that our teachers have planned for us. It is so much fun investigating the different areas of our classroom; we can be pirates digging in the sand for treasure one day and we can be on a spaceship to the moon the next. We play to learn!
We are fortunate to have a lovely outdoor area where our children can express themselves physically and investigate our natural world. There are opportunities for the children to explore their immediate environment by digging for mini-beasts, making mud pies or participating in water play. The children are encouraged to discover new things and they are provided with plenty of opportunities to talk about what they have found. As a result of this, our children begin to develop the key skills that they need in order to be competent and capable explorers and learners. These opportunities also support development in our prime areas; communication and language, physical development and personal, social and emotional development.
Alongside all of our fabulous play opportunities, children access daily letters and sounds groups. These include playful activities to support and promote early phonetic development. This means that children begin to identify the similarities and differences in the sounds and words they hear. They are encouraged to listen out for different environmental sounds such as the birds 'tweeting' and planes flying in the sky. As their phonetic knowledge develops, children are exposed to a world of rhyming and alliteration. We share lots of rhyming stories and have so much fun singing rhyming songs. When children are ready, they then begin to listen out for the individual sounds that make up words and begin to learn how to represent these sounds through writing.
Children have access to a rich and varied provision to support and promote mark making and fine motor development.
We love to explore the mathematical concepts of shape, space and measures through lots of exciting real life experiences such as baking, water and sand play. Children are encouraged to explore the similarities and differences in the shapes and amounts that they see and find in the world around them. We have so much fun doing lots of active maths activities such as counting as we jump, hop or clap and enjoy lots of engaging small group activities to promote mathematical development as we play. We love to give children maths challenges!