First Steps Nursery
Welcome!
We are a happy, 134 place Nursery for 2-4 year old children. Our Nursery is well resourced and benefits from a large, fenced outdoor space as well as spacious indoor learning areas. We are very proud of our caring and nurturing environment. Mrs. Walker is the Nursery Teacher and EYFS Lead and is supported by Mrs. Brown, Miss Roberts, Miss Stokoe, Mrs. Douglas, Miss Rice, Miss Trotter and Miss Armstrong.
In Nursery and Reception we follow the Early Years Framework which was published in September 2021. The Framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in Early Years and provides specific areas for learning which we cover as part of our curriculum.
We offer flexible hours and a fully inclusive Nursery unit. The Nursery unit consists of a wonderfully resourced indoor and outdoor environment that will challenge and motivate your child. A range of activities will be provided that will stimulate and develop your child’s inquisitiveness for learning. You will be involved every step of the way and will be kept up to date with information and learning opportunities for you and your child. At First Steps @ St Mary’s we work with you so that your child receives the best possible start in their learning journey.
These areas are:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Communication and Language Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Art and Design
Nursery Overview
Please find an overview of our day below:
All of your children’s snapshots can be found on Tapestry, which you will receive a login with your welcome pack. Tapestry is an excellent form of communication that can be used to share information about your child’s day at Nursery. It is also lovely for the parents to share what the children have been up to at home.
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For further information on our Nursery and Reception, please ring our school office to arrange a visit or see our Nursery prospectus below.
News letters:
Spring Term 2022
Toddler Group
We run a Toddler group on a Monday afternoon, this was previously in the Nursery building, but is now held within St. Mary’s Catholic Church Hall from 1.30-3.00pm, from birth up to Nursery age. There will be a selection of different activities such as role play, craft, sensory and free play. Refreshments and snack will be provided and we can’t wait to see you there!
Learning about Space
This term in Nursery we have been learning about Space and learning the names of the planets through songs. We have watched real footage of the first moon landing and space shuttles taking off and have joined in by counting 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!!!! We have used 2D shapes to represent space ships and aliens and have planned our own rocket models on paper before using junk models to bring our ideas to fruition. We helped to plan and create our own space station and have enjoyed dressing up in astronaut suits to practise using all of the new vocabulary we have been learning in our role play with friends. We have particularly enjoyed sharing the stories ‘Whatever Next’ and “Bob, man on the moon’ and have used real objects to re-enact story events and even enjoy our own moon picnic, complete with astronaut ice cream and rocket ice lollies.
Learning about Queen Elizabeth and the Jubilee.
In the last two weeks we have been having a great time learning about Queen Elizabeth II and her family. We now know that her children are called Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward and that she lives in London. We have made our role play area into Buckingham Palace and have been pretending to dress up as the queen, play at having corgis as pets and prepare for a banquet by making our own marks to represent writing.
In the creative area this week some children decided to create a 3D model of Buckingham Palace, complete with turrets and a drawbridge. Of course we had to decorate this in red, white and blue paper! In Yellow group our two year old’s have also been mark making to create their own collage flags and bunting and we have used these to add to our Art Gallery and decorate our main entrance. The children have produced some truly outstanding portraits of the queen, backing them on Union Jack flags to add to this display. We are looking forward to getting together with all of our school friends tomorrow for our street party celebration and singing the National anthem.
Please take a look at the topics, keys books and some helpful routines that are contained in our Autumn News letter.
Many thanks,
Mrs.Walker.
Autumn has arrived.
This week in Nursery we have been exploring the changing seasons and talking about Autumn. Some of us went for Autumn walks at the weekend with our families and brought our found treasures into Nursery to talk about, observe and use. These included conkers, leaves of all shapes, sizes and colours, berries, pine cones, acorns and sticks.
We have used our Autumn objects to create a tree in our transient art area, to create colourful leaf rubbings and observe closely with magnifying glasses. We have also included conkers and pine cones in our counting area and used blackberries to squash, making a lovely deep purple colour which we used to paint with outdoors. We bought some new equipment this week in Nursery, including some powder paint and pipettes, so we decided to mix some colours to use in our painting, including brown, green and orange. In our two year old’s room, we used apples to taste, print with and make patterns.
Exploring Forest school:
This week in our Forest school activities we have carried on exploring the theme of Autumn and the changing seasons. The children in Yellow group had the opportunity to visit our Forest school area for the first time and they absolutely loved it! We explored the many areas, including digging with tools, climbing trees, role-playing in the mud kitchen and playing hide and seek. After a nice drink and snack we collected leaves, sticks and bark and used these materials to create patterns and representations of faces. On our return to Nursery we even used the Autumn treasures we had collected to make Autumn crowns in the creative area.
What a busy day!
Food glorious food!!!!!
Last week in Nursery the children from our yellow group really enjoyed role-playing cooking cakes with play dough and went on an autumn walk to pick apples from the tree in our school grounds. This interest in learning about where our food comes from and in baking our food initiated our staff to include some baking activities in our weekly planning. After some consultation with the children; yellow group made cup cakes, green group made banana muffins, blue group made sultana scones and red group made apple crumble. Of course we all had to taste the baked goods and they were delicious!!!!!
Pumpkin soup.
After reading the story ‘Pumpkin soup’ by Helen Cooper, we decided to explore pumpkins in the Nursery environment in a sensory way and to make pumpkin soup. We used knives to chop pumpkin into pieces and added carrots and potatoes, lentils and stock cubes. We also made bread dough and kneaded the dough into bread rolls before cooking it in the oven. This activity was a lovely way to round off our investigations into the season of Autumn and to join in with the whole school design and technology day focused on cooking skills this week. Some children enjoyed the taste of the soup more than others but we all enjoyed sitting together to eat a warm meal and tried dipping our bread in. 
Autumn stay and play:
We had lots of spooky fun at our Autumn stay and play today.
A messy and fun time was had by all!! Thank you to all who attended and showed their support to our setting.
Nursery Nativity and Christmas party.
We have had a very busy last week in Nursery, enjoying our Christmas party and Nativity play. We rounded off the excitement and festivities by making some crafts this week to take home and by coming to Nursery in our pyjamas for a Christmas movie day. We wish you and all of your families a Happy Christmas and all the very best for the coming New Year. Have a lovely holiday.
Emma’s exotic animals.
As an end to our exciting ‘Amazing animals’ topic we had a special visitor in our Nursery on Friday 17th February. Emma brought in her menagerie of exotic animals and we all had a lovely time meeting and handling them. We learned about Rio the parrot, experienced holding an owl and a snake and learned about frogs, stick insects and hedgehogs. We were all very brave and loved getting up close to the animals and asking Emma questions about how to look after and care for them. Please keep an eye out on the website for more photos as next half term we will be learning about mini beasts and farm animals as part of our topic ‘Come outside’ and on the 20th March we will have duck eggs delivered and will experience watching them hatch and learning how to look after them.
Eggciting News!!!!
Today our duck eggs arrived in Nursery and caused lots of eggciting commotion.
We expect them to start hatching within 48 hours and are getting prepared to look after the ducklings when they do.
We will keep you posted on Facebook and Dojo when the ducklings begin to hatch.
Maths, physical and creative development in the EYFS.
As the weather begins to improve we have enjoyed the outdoor area this week and have been developing strong inks between topics we are studying indoors with the resources in our outdoor environment.
We have been adding daffodils and green water to the potion station and using scissors to cut up grass and leaves to add to our concoctions in play. We use different containers and utensils in this area to pour, fill, scoop and empty and build upon our use of creative vocabulary to pretend to make spells and say magic words. We have also been linking our indoor math’s curriculum to the outdoor environment, playing with numicon to practise our counting and ordering skills, and writing numerals in the creative station. Here, the children count to holes on large foam numicon pieces and order them independently from 1-10. They also look at numbered bumble bees, recalling the numerals and attempting to copy the shapes with writing implements. What a busy morning!
