Autumn Term – Getting to know you

This is where your learning journey begins! Our exciting activities and resources will help you to develop important skills in your educational journey, as well as ignite enthusiasm for learning and independence. You shall become familiar with the Nursery setting through exploration of both the large inside area and the beautiful and expansive outside garden.

You will have opportunities to select equipment and play imaginatively with your peers. There will be plenty of time to practise your running, climbing and ball skills. You will be spoilt for choice! Help us to learn all about your family and interests through group and individual discussions and listen to those of your peers. During the Autumn Term, some of you may celebrate religious or cultural festivals, so we would like you to share your experiences with everyone. We will taste foods from other cultures as well as produce art and crafts.

You will become more familiar with the names for the different parts of your body and how it works as well as learning how to look after yourselves with a healthy lifestyle and good hygiene. We will help to develop your pencil control through adult led, focused activities and by providing plenty of opportunities for emergent writing in the bright role play areas. Your fine motor skills will flourish without you even knowing it………you will be able to explore malleable materials, such as sensory play dough and clay, as well as practise your cutting, hammering and threading.

We will also begin to introduce you to our phonics scheme, ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’, to help you become familiar with letters and sounds and how to form these letters correctly when writing them. Just like adults! You will also use these letters to begin to write your own name, which is as special as you are. Finally, after all the excitement of running around outside and exploring the resources inside, you will enjoy the quiet, rest time on the carpet and you will listen to and join in with colourful, illustrated stories and daily nursery rhymes.

Early reading and Writing Skills

• Learn to discriminate between different environmental sounds
• Developing some favourite stories, rhymes and songs
• Enjoy rhymes and show an interest in books and rhymes
• Listen to and join in with stories, one-to-one and in small groups
• Start to distinguish between the different marks we can make.
• Using different writing tools, crayons, pencils, felt tips and chalks

Mathematic Skills

– join in with number nursery rhymes – recognise 2D shapes – counting by rote 1-10 – pattern sequences – recognise and write numbers 1-3 – Matching pairs – sorting objects – real world maths problems

Spring Term – What a Wonderful World!

Are you a globetrotter or a budding nature lover? This term you will have plenty of opportunities to learn all about the world we live in, the similarities and differences between our global communities and how to care for our environment. We will continue to extend your letters and sounds knowledge through the ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’ programme, as well as your writing skills.

Don’t forget you will need to keep practising your name writing to put on all that lovely independent work you will be doing! Our rhyming games will also help you to become more confident when identifying words that rhyme. We will be travelling around the world to look at different languages, habitats and cultures across the continents and researching those people who help us in our locality.

Now you are established into Nursery, you will have become more independent and our PE lessons will not only be beneficial to your fitness, but will encourage you to get dressed with little support. If you enjoy painting and craft, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to get your fingers dirty as we will be painting our own flags and exploring artistic traditions from around the world.

With Spring comes new life and through practical activities, we will be exploring plant growth and identifying what plants need to grow. With this new found knowledge we hope we will create some budding little gardeners to keep the garden looking neat and tidy. We will also continue caring for our environment by litter picking and advocating across the school for children to look after our world.

Early Reading and Writing Skills

• able to fill in the gap in a known story or song
• listen to stories with increased attention
• Sometimes, give meaning to the marks we make
• recognise own name
• identify letters with the sounds they make (phonemes)
• use a pencil, holding the pencil with the tripod pencil grip.

Mathematic Skills

– recognition of numbers to 5 – formation of numbers to 5 – volume and capacity experiments – ordering and sequencing – sorting and matching – subitising – the cardinal principle – positional language – comparing

Summer Term – Animals

The sun is out and the animals are having lots of fun! You will learn about how to care for animals, animal habits and use appropriate words to describe them. You will also learn the name of baby animals. ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’ will continue and near the end of the term you will have learnt all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds.

Having grasped such a collection of letter sounds, the challenge will now be to read simple words, but we all know you can do it, it just takes practise! You will also continue forming your letters correctly and I’m sure you will love showing off your excellent writing skills in the role play areas!

As you are so good at getting changed now, we will be practising our gymnastics, particularly focusing on travelling, balancing and jumping. We will also have to make sure we do lots of running and racing practise in preparation for the all-important sports day. But remember, we’re all winners in Nursery!

Plus, there will be lots of opportunities for investigation and we will be identifying items that are magnetic as well as looking at why ice turns into water. By the end of this term, you will have developed all the necessary skills to become an independent, enthusiastic and creative learner.

Early Reading and Writing Skills

• recognise an increasing number of letters
• show an interest in print in the environment
• ascribe meaning to print in the environment
• hear and say initial sounds in words.

Mathematic Skills

recognition of numbers to 10- counting by rote 1-20 – development of mathematical language e.g. longer, shorter, bigger, smaller – one more/one less – practical addition – practical subtraction – weighing and balancing – completing sequences – capacity

Core Nursery Rhymes for the year to support language development:

• Baa Baa Black Sheep
• Incy Wincy Spider
• Humpty Dumpty
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• Hickory Dickory Dock
• 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
• Miss Polly had a Dolly
• Tommy Thumb

These rhymes will be repeated during carpet times throughout the week. By the end of their nursery year the children should be very familiar with these rhymes and be able to join in with the words and/or actions.