Nursery and Preschool

Welcome to Nursery and Preschool

Summer 1

Welcome to the Nursery and Preschool Class Page

Dear Parents,

We hope you all had an enjoyable Easter holiday. We know that many of our pupils will have celebrated Eid and we look forward to hearing their stories about this special time. 

If your child is joining us this term, we would like to wish you a warm welcome.

Staffing in Nursery and Preschool is:

Mrs Morris (Class Teacher)

Mrs Ubaid (HLTA)

Miss Iqbal (TA)

Mrs Sabar (TA)

Attendance and Prompt Arrival

Regular attendance helps your child build good habits, getting them used to the idea of getting up and ready for learning each day, in preparation for school. It helps your child build and sustain relationships with staff and make friends.  It can also help to ensure continuity of learning, with staff being more easily able to assess your child’s progress and identify next steps for them in accessing the curriculum. The higher a pupil’s attendance, the more they are likely to learn, and the better prepared they will be for starting school.

Nursery gates open at 8:30am (morning session) and 12:15pm (afternoon session) and close at 8:45am and 12:30pm. Please ensure you arrive on time so that your child does miss out on valuable learning time.

Home time

The gates open for home time from 11:15 - 11:30am (morning session) and 3:00 - 3:15pm (afternoon session). We politely ask that you pick your child(ren) up on time to make sure that staff have adequate time to prepare between the morning and afternoon session.

Please make sure if someone we have not met before is collecting your child, that you have informed the school and they know the password. Without doing this we cannot let your child leave. We understand this can be frustrating, but we are always vigilant at home time to make sure pupils leave safely. With this in mind, we encourage all children to hold an adult’s hand all the way home, or all the way to the car.

Clothing, Uniform and Footwear

We encourage outdoor play in all types of weather, so please make sure your child(ren) is wearing suitable clothing (including a waterproof coat) and footwear. If you haven't yet done so, please send your child with a spare pair of wellington boots (wellies) to keep at nursery.

Preschool pupils and Nursery pupils who are already three years old, should wear the Brookhouse uniform each day they come to nursery. If you have any questions about uniform, please ask a member of staff.

Curriculum and Learning

This half term our topic is ‘Marvellous Minibeasts!’. Please see the knowledge organiser for the list of stories, songs and rhymes we will be using to support our learning. There is also a list of key vocabulary to practise and talk about with your child, as well as homework tasks to support and reinforce pupils’ learning. A printed copy of this will also be provided. If you have not received one by Friday 19^th April, please ask a member of staff.

Below we have summarised this half term’s learning objectives for each area of the curriculum.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Developing friendships will be a key theme this half term as welcome more pupils to our Nursery and Preschool class. As part of our religious education ‘What makes a good friend?’ topic, pupils will explore how we make/choose friends, why friends are important and what they can do to be a good friend (e.g. sharing, taking turns and inviting others to join their play). Staff will continue to encourage pupils to talk about their feelings and also to think how others might be feeling in different situations.

Communication and Language

Our curriculum is language rich and based around books and rhymes. Please see the knowledge organiser for a list of the stories, songs and rhymes we will be using this half term.  

We want pupils to know many rhymes, to be able to talk about familiar books, and to be able to tell a long story. We will provide lots of opportunities, both indoors and outdoors to retell familiar stories using masks, story props and puppets. Staff will encourage pupils to speak clearly and to take turns when having a conversation.

Our learning environment is designed carefully to encourage pupils to follow their own interests and express their own ideas. The variety of resources both indoors and outdoors provide ample opportunities for children to practise new vocabulary and develop their language and communication skills. Staff model, stimulate and extend children’s interactions by asking open-ended questions. Alongside this, visual cues are used to aid language development and communication.

Physical Development

Staff provide lots of resources for pupils to grasp, hold and explore such as playdough, collage, finger paint, spoons, brushes, tweezers, pegs, threading games, etc, to develop and strengthen their fine motor skills in preparation for writing. Pupils also have daily opportunities to develop their gross motor skills using bikes, scooters, large mark making and outdoor equipment.

Key targets for Nursery pupils for Summer 1 include beginning to show good manipulation and control, gaining control of their whole body through continual practice of large movements such as waving, kicking, rolling, crawling and walking.

Again, linking to learning about friendship, Preschool pupils will be targeted to take part in some group activities which they make up for themselves, or in teams. They will also be encouraged to develop their skills for skipping, hopping, standing on one leg and holding a pose for a game like musical statues.

We continue with the toothbrushing scheme and your child is working hard to use the right pressure in order to clean their teeth and not damage their toothbrush. Remember - this is not intended to replace tooth brushing at home. Our aim is to help support and reinforce what you are already teaching your child. It is still important that your child’s tooth brushing is supervised by an adult at home, in the morning and last thing at night before bed. Brushing before bedtime is especially important, to prevent plaque and food particles remaining in contact with the teeth throughout the night. 

Literacy

Early Literacy skills are very closely linked to communication and language skills. Children need to communicate effectively if they are going to read and write. Stories are shared daily and left for children to access independently within our cosy and inviting reading areas. The books, stories and rhymes are carefully chosen to expose pupils to a wide range of vocabulary. Resources within provision provide pupils with opportunities to use this vocabulary in their play and conversations with others.

We strongly advise that you regularly share stories with your child at home. This is key to supporting their communication, language and speech development, and is also a wonderful bonding experience which supports their personal, social and emotional development.

This term, Preschool pupils will begin our Read Write Inc Phonics programme to learn specific sounds. They will begin to practise letter formation and writing their own name.

Maths

The children will be supported to access maths in lots of exciting and practical ways. We will use number and finger rhymes in maths as a way to familiarise pupils with the numbers 1 to 5, when counting both forwards and backwards, and encouraging pupils to join in. This will then be supported through the use of games and activities such as playing hide and seek, or rocket-launch countdowns and within provision.

Nursery pupils will learn to count in everyday contexts, and to notice and arrange things in patterns. They will continue to explore building with a range of resources, both indoors and outdoors.

Preschool pupils will continue to learn about repeating patterns and will be encourage to notice and correct an error in a repeating pattern. They will begin to develop fast recognition of up to 3 objects, without having to count them individually (this is called ‘subitising’), and compare quantities using ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’. Initially linking to our first book, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, Preschool pupils will also learn to describe events using the words such as ‘first’ and ‘then’. They will apply this to sequence events from the story and also in the context of learning about the life cycle of a butterfly.

Understanding the World

Our 'Marvellous Minibeasts' topic will provide lots of exciting learning opportunities this half term with pupils being encouraged to talk about the minibeasts they discover outdoors, using a wide range of vocabulary. Preschool pupils will also learn about the life cycle of a butterfly. 

As part of our religious education curriculum, Preschool pupils will be learning about friendship. They will be encouraged to notice and develop positive attitudes about the differences between people. Nursery pupils will also be learning to repeat actions that have an effect.

Expressive Art and Design

Pupils are provided with a variety of opportunities to develop their imagination with staff encouraging creativity both indoors and outdoors. Our resources include drawing, painting, role play areas, songs, musical instruments, construction toys and junk modelling.

This half term, Nursery pupils will start to develop their pretend play, pretending that one object represents another. They will also be encouraged to use all of their senses to explore a variety of materials indoors and outdoors. Preschool pupils will learn and remember to sing entire songs and also ‘create’ their own song by improvising around one they know.

Further Information

We very much look forward to working with your child(ren) this half term. We hope you find the information on this class page helpful. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to talk to one of our team.

For detailed information about our Early Years’ curriculum for 2-year-old, 3-year-old and 4-year-old pupils, you can also visit the Early Years section on the curriculum page. 

Kind regards,

Mrs Morris, Mrs Ubaid, Miss Iqbal and Mrs Sabar.