Nursery Class

Welcome to Nursery Class where adventures are a vital part of our day!

Thank you for visiting our class page. My name is Mrs Foy and I am the Nursery teacher and Miss Enticott is the Early Years practitioner. We love working as a team with the Nursery children and the other staff and children in Reception. We are an Early Years Foundation Stage Unit which means that children from 3 to 5 years old play and learn together. It is like a happy family in school, with the older children supporting the younger ones and modelling good learning behaviour.

Nursery  staff believe that it is very important to inspire young children and support them in their adventures in the world and in learning. We hope to instill a love of learning at the very start of a child's journey in education. We regularly welcome in parents to share ways to support their child's development and learning. We have weekly Welly Time sessions to help children to have mini adventures and believe going on trips outside of class is vital to give children a wider, shared experience of the world.

In Nursery we love to learn. We do this in different ways. When the year begins we do lots of learning through play and the staff listen to and support our learning conversations.  We do have some adult led learning time throughout the day, where we learn to sit nicely, listen to each other and to the adults. We try hard not to interrupt or shout out but be respectful of each other. We have high expectations of ourselves and always put our best effort into our learning.

Learning to work and play with others is a vital part of each day and we also learn ways to regulate our emotions and manage the emotional challenges that we meet. 

For more information about our EYFS, please click on the link below to our EYFS Handbook for parents:

St Sidwell's EYFS Handbook for parents

Please keep a close eye on our Dojo page (only open to family members) to see what Nursery have been up to in school. We will update the website page at the end of each half term.

                                   Mrs Nikki Foy- Nursery Lead                Miss Kimberly Endicott- EYFS Practitioner

Spring Term 1

We have started the New Year with enthusiasm and have been enjoying some great learning. The children are becoming great listeners and talkers! They sit beautifully on the carpet, listen to their friends and are working really hard on not interrupting! They all have made great contributions to class discussions and we will continue to work on these important skills as we go through the term.

We have really enjoyed doing squiggle while you wiggle. We usually do this twice a week where we practise making big arm movements in the air- for example using scarves to make arches- always to some music- then we make the same movements on paper with crayons or chalks. See pictures regularly posted on Dojo.

Our early phonics programme is well under way. The children are working on their listening and auditory discrimination skills and identifying and producing rhymes. We have spent this half-term exploring collage and using  different materials to create pictures. In maths we have focused on recognising numbers 1-4 and counting accurately. As always we have enjoyed daily singing and listening to stories as well as spending lots of time ‘learning through play’ and of course …having fun!

Spring Term 2

Nursery have had a wonderful time this half term learning all about Travelling. They have spent their time in school exploring and adventuring, and developing those all important skills needed for school.

They have been enjoying their ‘Squiggle whilst you Wiggle’ sessions which help the children with their different mark making skills. It helps to develop both fine and gross motor skills needed for writing.

They have also been learning about different patterns and textures, and went on a nature walk around the school grounds to take some bark rubbings.

The children have also been working super hard, learning to write their names! Each morning the children are encouraged to write their name on the whiteboard using a name card if they need to. We also encourage the children to write their names when they have drawn a picture or created something for extra practice.

Mrs Foy and Miss Enticott have been working hard to develop the children’s love of reading and writing through exploring their imaginations. They have been on a magic train ride in the school playground, and even sailed on a pirate ship!

Little Learners made a visit to St Sidwell’s where the children were joined with their parents to enjoy some very fun mark making opportunities all linked to their topic, Travelling. They enjoyed getting messy with the Car Wash and practising their fine motor skills by scooping and pouring. The FSU staff also made a bike wash outside with bubble wrap for the children to ride through.