Ashurst Primary School

Nursery class 

'Excellence Everyday'  

'Learn, Live, Laugh and Love Ashurst'

Learn to be inspiring and make a difference to this world, we know how amazing you are,

Live with understanding and compassion for others, knowing we are all different and special in a community where equality stands tall,

Laugh and listen to the enjoyment of learning and excitement of everyone celebrating their achievements,

Love Ashurst, our special school and the hub of supportive staff, parents and children who aim high to be the best they can be.

New Parents information

About Nursery

Class Teacher - Mrs J. O'Brien 

Learning Assistants- Mrs. L Goldsack

In Nursery we are a caring, happy and friendly team. Children are at the heart of all that we do and we are committed to ensuring that all of our children have the best possible start to their learning journey and life. We recognise that every child, is an individual. This underpins the way we plan our curriculum and develop the children’s learning environment. We provide exciting and challenging learning opportunities for every level of interest—from the most active “outdoor” learner to those who like to work for hours on their own special project. We work in partnership with parents to enable our children to learn in a fun and exciting way through play.

Ashurst has a 26 place morning nursery for children with an admission each September, January and April. Places are available for children the term following their 3rd birthday.

Applications for a place are managed by the admissions section of the LA and forms can be collected from our main school office.

General Information

Start and Finish Times 

Nursery starts at 8:40am and finish at 11:40am

Children are dropped off on the right hand side of school,  around to the back of school. Here there is a black fence. Nursery gate will be labelled clearly. Please wait at the black gate, where a member of staff will greet the children, and open the gate for them to come into nursery. 

PE Lessons

Our PE lessons will take place on a Thursday . Please send your child into school on wearing their PE kit on this day (they will remain on this throughout the morning).

The uniform is:

Black jogging bottoms with the logo or black sports leggings 

White PE tops 

Black zip hoody tops 

Summer PE kit
Children will wear the usual red shorts and the white PE top 

What do we learn?

There are 7 areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage, outlined within the EYFS Early Adopter Framework. We deliver the curriculum through planned, purposeful play that is based upon the individual interests and learning needs of each individual child. Every child in our class is at a different stage and we respect each child an an individual.  We treat each child as an individual according to their needs. We understand that every child learns differently and we will always adapt our teaching to help everyone learn. We encourage learning with friends and sharing our learning ideas to help each other learn even more on our way to be independent learners. We take pride in all we do and are proud of each other too.

 Communication and Language

The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children’s language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, we give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, storytelling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children are supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children, they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children achieve at school and in later life.

 Physical Development 

Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, we support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practise of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.

Literacy

It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).

Mathematics

 Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding - such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and ten-frames for organising counting - children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. The curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.

Understanding the World

 Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society, such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will supports reading comprehension.

Expressive Arts and Design

 The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. Children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe.

Nursery Long Term Plan 2023-2024

Nursery Topic Webs

Throughout the year in nursery we have 3 overarching themes that ensure a broad a balanced approach to early learning.  The topics are: 

• Magical Colours 
• Ee- igh-ee-igh oh! and
• Aspiring adventures.

Each term a new topic web will be added outlining the specific learning we will be focussing upon during Nursery sessions. 

Learning 2023-2024

Learning Through Play

The children have settled incredibly to nursery this half term. They have been busy learning though play. Play is one of the key ways in which children learn and grow. It underpins learning and all aspects of children's development. At Ashurst we provide children with vital opportunities to develop their language skills, emotions, creativity and social skills. We have abundance of opportunities and resources ensuring children make sense of their world. 

Spring 2023 Learning

Pancake Day

The children in nursery loved celebrating pancake day by having chocolate pancakes for snack. We also discussed the origins of pancake day, what our favourite toppings are and all the  ingredients needed to make them.

Autumn 2022 Learning

Christmas Party Day

 We loved celebrating Christmas by taking part in lots of fun filled activities. We enjoyed Christmas stories, a snowball fight, stick the tail on Rudolf, making Christmas cards, painting our own baubles, making reindeer food and having party snacks on the last day. 

‘There’s a Witch in Your Book !’

As part of celebrating the special event Halloween we read a fantastic interactive story 'There's a Witch in Your Book'. The children loved interacting with the story by casting spells and using their magic wand fingers.

Like in the book there was slime in our classroom! We decided to make marks and explore with it.

The n the children then went onto making their own wands and the day after we even made our own potions.

World Space Week

This week in nursery we celebrated World Space Week. We started our week reading the wonderful story Mae Among the Stars. We talked about how Mae Jemison was the first African Amercian woman to become an astronaut. We continued the week by making rockets outside in role play, creating rockets using large shapes, completing astronaut training in PE and taking out rocket pencils for a ride. Our favourite was definitely the astronaut training!

Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle

Squiggle Whilst you Wiggle is a simple, fun and physical way to get children mark making and writing. We wiggle along  to dances that provide a link with marks, shapes and letter formation.  We then transfer the movements onto paper.