Welcome to our Early Years page . We have an Early Years department with its own building and outdoor play . Both nursery and reception are taught here by Mrs Dawson and Mrs Welsby . Our TA is Mrs Raymond .
Our Early Years day is always filled with lots of joy. Every day is different just as every child is different. We have such fun as a staff and really enjoy the company of our children. They always make each day unique !
We do have some special routines which we follow in Early Years .
Usually on arrival the children self- register.
They find their name and hang it on the tree. They can then go off and explore the Early Years environment. They can see if there are any enhancements which they may like to visit later or they may just have a play with a familiar area of learning in the continuous provision.
We then shake the tambourine and have a special song which tells the children to come on the carpet. At this point we say our prayers and choose a child as prayer leader. We give out jobs for the day such as prayer leader, line leader, chief tidier, tambourine shaker and snack helper. We often sing a weather song and choose a child as a weather reporter. We sing a special hello song for the register.
We may then share a story, incorporate some Write dance moves to develop our gross motor skills.
We then go to activities where the children access areas of continuous provision both indoor and outdoor.
At the end of this session we have our tidy up song which at the moment is from Enchanted. It is called A Happy Working Song. We come on to the carpet and enjoy a dough disco session to develop our fine motor skills.
Go, go, go to the dough disco.
We then wash our hands and have our special snack time in a circle. This gives us the opportunity to chat with friends and share news/stories. Staff often share stories from home too. Mrs Dawson sometimes shares stories about her cheeky Springer Spaniel Buzz. It is good for the children to hear staff talking and modelling language.
We then have a short session of physical play and the children often can see their siblings playing out and say hello.
We then have a session on the carpet with a maths focus where we may sing number songs as a warm up or enjoy some digit dancing and again we then go to our choosing time .
At the end of the morning the full time children get ready for lunchtime.
The part time children nursery children enjoy a fun phonics session singing songs and playing games to develop their awareness of letters and sounds from phase one. Then the part time children are picked up at 12.00.
After lunch the full timers usually enjoy their special phonics session. We split nursery and reception . Each have a separate focus on letters and sounds . Nursery may share rhyming stories , sing phonic songs from phase one covering the many aspects such as body sounds , alliteration and building up to oral blending / segmenting . Reception cover Phase 2/3 Letters and Sounds building up to phase 4 . We use phonics play to help deliver teaching , espresso phonics and our formation of letters comes from Ruth Miskin’s Read Write Inc jingles . During the week we incorporate our Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design into our continuous provision or as a special focus.
We have special sessions where we focus on our Religious Education Programme which is called Come and See. We also have collective worship each day . The children share prayers and songs together either in class or in assemblies.
We incorporate a PSHE / RSE session on a weekly basis following The Life to the Full Prigramme . We usually have a big session outside at the end of the day where we are responsible for helping to put all the outdoor equipment away.
We then come inside for some circle time games, stories and songs.
At home-time we collect our bags and coats. We are encouraged to put them on ourselves. We then get any picture or notes from our tray.
We are often quite tired at the end of the day because early years is so busy and active. ( We can be messy too which is always a sign of an active day ) .
We say our special end of the day prayer and our going home song.
In our Early Years we are very lucky to have two teachers working with us.
Mrs Dawson works on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Mrs Welsby works with us on Thursdays and Fridays.
Mrs Raymond is our teaching assistant and she works with Early Years all week. Miss Chen also works as a TA within our setting .
Miss Waldron covers PPA sessions for both teachers.
Useful Links
Letters and Sounds
'twinkl' app with lots of letter and sounds games - http://www.twinkl.co.uk/page/twinkl-apps
Letters and sounds songs we sing to help your child remember the sound -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCMvsQho4ZE
Initial Sounds - http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f
Blending and Segmenting - http://more2.starfall.com/m/word-machines/short-a/load.htm?d=demo&n=main&y=1&&