Early Years - Nursery and Reception

Please note, this page will be updated shortly after the start of the new school year 2022-23. There have been changes to the details below.

Rosina Smith-Bennett	Zeena Powell	Alice Wilkinson	Catherine Evans	Lee-Ann Swires

Welcome to the Early Years. It's an exciting time, for us all and we are so glad that you have joined us.

What will my child do in our Early Years?

Your child will learn by doing things for themselves, by exploring and investigating, watching and listening, talking and discussing, creating and communicating. 

All children follow a curriculum called the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and this is broken down into 3 prime aspects and 4 specific areas of learning.

Personal, social and emotional development

One of the prime aspects of your child’s first year at school will be a focus on their personal, social and emotional development, and their teacher will be aiming to give them a good start to their school experience by helping them form positive relationships, build confidence and self-awareness, as well as manage their feelings and behaviour.

Physical development

Physical development is important too: you will hopefully notice that they are starting to move more confidently and to understand how to look after themselves and be healthy.

Communication

The final prime area this year is communication. Children learn through speaking and listening first and foremost, and this year you may notice your child communicating in a variety of ways at school — for example, through stories, in conversations with adults and their friends, or through facial expression, movement or dance.

Specific Areas of Learning

For the specific areas of learning, your child will learn the basics of literacy — reading, writing and phonics. We use a specific phonics scheme called Read, Write Inc., there are further details on the website. In maths, we will cover numbers, simple sums, shapes, spaces and simple measuring.

Your children learn about the world, too, exploring different people and communities, and how we can use different forms of technology in our learning. Finally, imagination and creativity are championed in the area of expressive arts. Your child will explore different media and materials and be encouraged to use their imagination in a range of different experiences.

How can I help my child?

Your child will be informally observed throughout their time and the teachers will use the observations to assess your child’s learning, you can follow the observations on our learning walls.

Read, read, read

For our Parents' guide about early reading please click on the following link:

Supporting your child - early reading

Read to your child and encourage them to read to you. Read anything and everything, not just the reading scheme books. Real books, with pictures, rhyme and enjoyable stories are crucial here. Try to encourage your child to talk about the pictures, or to make predictions about what will happen next. 

Encourage your child to recognise and read print when you are out shopping, on the bus or at the park. For examples; A for Aldi, M for Morrisons etc.

Please fill in the Reading Diary each time you read with your child. This can be a really useful communication tool.

Help with phonics

Talk to your child about individual letters (especially the letters in their name) and their sounds. Singing songs and nursery rhymes really helps them to find out more about letters and sounds. Play I-spy when you go out (using the sound the letter makes, rather than its name).

Talk numbers

For maths, there are all sorts of ways to encourage number recognition. Try to involve your child in using numbers at home by singing number rhymes and songs or by encouraging them to recognise and read numbers when you are in the car. When shopping, ask them to select the number of apples or bananas you need — they’re helping you out, and learning at the same time.

Getting dressed independently

And finally, it is really useful if you can encourage your child to have a go at dressing themselves at home so that they can do themselves during the day. 

Two-way communication is really important to us— we aim to be available as a point of contact with you as much as possible. It’s really worth making sure that you keep us up to date with what your child is interested in at home so that we can try to incorporate your child’s interests into our planning. If you have any worries or concerns do please let the staff know about them. By talking concerns through together we can all benefit and learn more about your child.