Our Day
WELCOME TO NURSERY AT LACEYFIELD, LOUTH
Nursery is all about laying the foundations of all future learning through having fun and having lots of hands-on practical experiences. We do lots of that from the very moment we walk through the door.
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is rich in stories, songs and rhythm and rhyme to support our language development and to open up the door to a range of themes, topics and hooks to inspire our curiosity and wonder! Through careful planning we cover all 7 areas of the EYFS curriculum and build our love of learning on the way!
Read, Write, Inc Ready in Nursery
At LaceyField, children start their Phonics learning from day one. Phonics teaching and learning in Nursery focuses on ensuring the children are “Read Write Inc. Ready” (RWIR) and therefore ready for their learning in Reception class.
At LaceyField, we do this through interactive and focused adult led sessions which help the children to hear, say and use the sounds they will need. This provides a foundation which enables children to become fluent readers as they move into Reception and Year One. Reading for Pleasure is part of every day teaching and learning at the school, therefore we ensure the importance of reading to and with a child is modelled in the setting and shared with the children’s parents. A focus on learning Nursery Rhymes is also at the heart of phonics Nursery teaching and learning.
Read Write Inc. terminology and resources are introduced in the environment and by adults working with the children. We introduce ‘Fred Talk’, where children learn to blend segmented sounds and adults model the language needed when forming sounds correctly in writing. Later, we introduce ‘Fred Fingers’ to help children with identifying the sounds in words.
In the summer term before your child starts in a Reception class, they will be introduced to the first set of sounds needed in Read Write Inc. formal phonics lessons, which begin on day one of their Reception class.
Our Mark Making Journey – Our first steps to becoming a writer!
Our daily routine and structure enables even the youngest of children to build their muscles and fingers in preparation for writing! All our resources are selected carefully to encourage the strengthening of little fingers to ensure we all can hold a pencil effectively! We love to thread, draw, dig and pour in our play and these ensure we are ready to write! Daily dough disco and Squiggle sessions teach us how to make sure we are prepared as well as model the movements we will later need to form letters! We also love to draw, write our names and paint on a small and large scale!
Mastery Maths
Over the course of the year we will count, match and sing to embed our number knowledge. We will learn that numbers represent amounts and that these can change and counting helps us to recognise how many are in a set. We will use the 5 counting principles in a range of contexts to build our number knowledge and skills. This will be delivered through play songs and stories.
Nursery Overview
A day in Nursery!
We start our session with Nurture breakfast, where we all enjoy a bagel and milk. During this time we find out ‘what we are learning today’. We also talk about the weather and what day of the week it is.
We then go into our key worker groups for story time – this is either our focus story for the week, or one voted by us. We love reading stories written by different authors and from different cultures. After this we either go into ‘Dough Disco’ or ‘Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle!’ In ‘Dough Disco’, we splat, squeeze, poke and roll the dough to music to develop our fine motor skills and pencil grip. ‘Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle’, helps get our bodies ready for writing. First, we ‘wiggle’ and move to the music whilst making shapes in the air with our flipper flappers. We then ‘squiggle’ using crayons, paint or chalk on paper and sometimes on the floor outside. We make lines, circles, crosses, arches, all in practice for our early writing and pencil control. We then self-register – this helps us to recognise our names, and write them. We also add our peg on to the colour monster to identify how we are feeling.
We then have our first child initiated learning session of the day. This is the most important part of our day where we get down to the serious business of play. Each area in our setting is carefully planned to allow us to explore all seven areas of the curriculum and the seven educational programmes in a creative and imaginative way. We love to create and make things in Nursery. We also like to investigate and explore, applying our new knowledge and understanding through play.
Next, we go into our key worker groups for ‘learning time’. These activities are either based on Mathematics, Phonics, Understanding of the World or Personal, Social and Emotional Education. They are creative and interactive and allow us to develop our social skills, self-confidence, communication and language skills.
We then have our second child initiated learning session of the day. We love to explore our outdoor environments and we do this in all weathers, so wellies and a coat are a must! We take risks and challenge ourselves. We balance on beams, build dens and explore the world around us. There are so many areas to explore with endless possibilities for learning and taking care of our environment. We love learning outside!
We end our morning session just before lunch time. Can you believe how much learning we do in one session? We make sure our afternoons sessions are just as action packed as the mornings and provide the same learning opportunities as the morning session.
The session ends with us having a snack altogether. During this time we chat about our learning and what we have enjoyed doing. We also squeeze in another story if time allows it!
All of our learning is underpinned by our ‘Beehaviours for Learning’ and this is evident in everything we do. We are learning to become independent and confident and we love every part of our learning journey together. We are always Busy Being Brilliant!