Nursery
Rights Respecting Articles in Child Friendly Language
Play is the highest form of research.
- Albert Einstein
Please visit our 'Welcome to Penwortham' website for lots of information about the Nursery, videos of the setting and stories from the teachers.
Hello and welcome to Nursery! Nursery is a really exciting first step into the school community and we extend a warm welcome to you all. Our vision is for children to have the best possible start to school life and to ignite the love of learning that will be so important throughout their lives. Wellbeing is at the heart of what we do at Penwortham. We help children to form positive friendships with their peers and strong, nurturing relationships with their teachers. We encourage them to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children learn to listen to others, express themselves well and have resilience in the face of a challenge. We support children to be independent and engaged learners. We want every child to make good or better progress from their starting points and carefully plan our curriculum to ensure this happens.
In the Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception) children learn through a stimulating play-based curriculum and have daily opportunities to free flow between the indoor and outdoor environment. During our sessions we also provide opportunities for adult-led, group and whole class activities as well as child-initiated learning.
The Early Years curriculum consists of 7 different areas:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The activities and resources on offer around the Nursery will support and encourage learning in these areas. Your child’s learning will then be recorded through observations, which are uploaded onto a secure website called Tapestry. These are then available for you to see and comment on, once a password has been set up.
The overarching principles of the early years (Early Years Statutory Framework, 2023):
- every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
- children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships
- children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
- importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates.
We look forward to working in partnership with you throughout the year and value the important role you play in your child’s learning.
Meet the team
The teachers in Nursery are Mrs Gladwin (Mon-Weds) and Mr Alimi (Thurs, Fri).
The Nursery Nurses are Miss Field, Miss Adams and Miss Driver.
What we do and when
Our learning
Autumn Term
As a Nurture school, we recognise how important transitions are for all our pupils. We started the Autumn term with home visits and stay and play sessions for our Nursery children and their families. This has been a wonderful opportunity to get to know the children and their interests and spend time sharing information with parents and carers. The children have impressed us with how quickly they have settled in and are already accessing activities in the setting with confidence.
Our topic this half term is 'Ready Teddy Go!' We will be reading lots of teddy bear stories including 'The Everywhere Bear' and 'Whatever Next'. The children will have the opportunity to make puppets, retell stories and create their own mini books. We will also spend time supporting the children with important social skills such as turn taking, sharing and initiating games with their new classmates. We are looking forward to a really exciting year together, full of fun and learning!
Last Year
As part of our ‘Beep, Beep, Let’s Go!’ topic, the children created pictures of different vehicles using 2D shapes. This half term we have been building on our learning about 2D shapes from the Autumn term. We recapped on naming and describing a circle, triangle, square and rectangle. The children were challenged to explain the difference between a square and rectangle and find examples of each shape in the environment.
The Nursery children took advantage of the freezing weather in January to get outside and explore making ice. We filled up buckets and sand moulds with water then left them outside overnight to see if they would freeze. There was lots of excitement the next day when we discovered that the water had frozen into ice!
The children took turns to closely observe the ice and noticed that tiny bubbles were frozen inside. They touched the ice to feel how cold it was. We talked about the temperature being minus 6℃ that morning! The children counted back “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6”
We took a huge sheet of ice from the water tray into the Nursery. We wanted to see what would happen to the ice inside the classroom. We made predictions about what would happen. One child said “I think it will melt back to water. It’s hot inside and it won’t stay like ice.” We noticed that the ice started to melt around the edges really quickly. Lots of water started to collect in the builder’s tray. Our predictions were correct!
In Summer 2 our topic was ‘Sunshine, Seashells and Sandcastles.’ We really enjoyed reading a range of texts that helped us to learn about different seaside destinations in England and across the world. We talked about what you might do at the beach and shared our experiences of going on holiday. The children looked on a world map to find some of the countries they had visited. We also found out what it was like to visit the seaside in the past.
As part of our science week learning, we read ‘Clean Up!’ and ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’. Both of these books helped us to learn about plastic pollution and how important it is to keep our seas and beaches clean. We enjoyed sharing what we had learnt at the Science Showcase.
In Summer 1 our topic was ‘Let It Grow’. This topic was an excellent opportunity for the children to learn about the life cycles of a frog, caterpillar and chick. The children also learnt about the different stages of human growth and the names of different animals and their babies.
In our Nursery garden, the children closely observed lots of exciting changes over the spring season. We are growing lots of different fruits and vegetables including carrots, strawberries, potatoes, pumpkins, beetroot and tomatoes! As part of the growing process, the children learnt about what plants need to grow well and have been taking turns to water the garden each day.
The children also had the opportunity to see the life cycle of a caterpillar first hand. Over a few weeks our Nursery caterpillars grew bigger and bigger until they made their cocoons. After 2 more weeks our butterflies hatched from their cocoons. We spent some time observing the butterflies, then we released them into our wellbeing garden to begin some new adventures!
In Spring 2, our topic was ‘What’s On the Menu?’ This topic provided lots of opportunities for hand-on activities such as baking bread rolls and pizza, learning about food from around the world and finding out what makes a healthy diet.
We read lots of stories about food and talked about our favourite things to eat. We found out about the importance of eating healthily and we learnt the ‘5-a-day Fruit song’ with Makaton signs.
After reading the stories ‘Zed’s Bread’ and ‘The Little Red Hen’ the children made their own bread rolls. They carefully weighed, measured and stirred the ingredients, then kneaded the dough before rolling it into balls. At the writing table, the children made their own mini books to show the steps needed to make the bread.
We transformed our home corner into a pizzeria restaurant. The children took it in turns to pretend to cook the food, take the orders and be the customers. It was lots of fun!
We also made real pizzas and invited Miss Lewis and Miss Bedeau to our restaurant to try them!
Last half term our topic was ‘Beep, Beep, Let’s Go!’ We were reading a range of fiction and non-fiction texts including ‘The Train Ride’, ‘The Naughty Bus’ and ‘Emergency!’ Each book has provided the opportunity for lots of discussion and for the children to share their own experiences of travelling in different vehicles. We have learnt new vocabulary such as ‘platform’, ‘timetable’ and ‘route’ and it has been wonderful to hear the children using these words independently during free flow play.
Linked to our transport theme, we have also been learning about road safety. We talked about rules for keeping safe like holding an adult's hand and looking and listening carefully for traffic before crossing the road. We learnt a song called 'Stop, Look and Listen before you cross the street' and looked at different examples of crossings such as a pelican crossing and a zebra crossing. During one of our group sessions, the children used small world toys to demonstrate what they had learnt.
In Maths, we used our vehicles topic to explore 2D shapes. The children created their own train pictures and were challenged to name and describe the shapes they used. "I got 5 circles for the wheels. The windows are circles. This square is the engine and this bit that points forward is a triangle. It has 3 sides."
The cold weather has been an excellent opportunity for us to closely observe and explore in the outdoor area. The children found that ice had formed overnight in the water tray. They enjoyed breaking the ice into smaller pieces so that they could hold it in their hands. We noticed that there were tiny bubbles inside the ice. The children used words like “freezing”, “smooth” and “crunchy” to describe the ice. In the afternoon, we went back to check the ice and one child exclaimed “It’s nearly all melted! The sun came out!”
During our topic 'Let It Grow’ we learnt about life cycles and how plants and animals grow.
How can you help at home?
A really important part of Nursery is helping the children to become more independent. This is something you can also help with at home, for example, encouraging your child to put on their coat/shoes by themselves or tidying toys away when they have finished playing. Reading stories together at home and visiting the library is hugely beneficial in helping to promote a love of reading. It will also help to develop early reading skills. Looking at and talking about signs, print or numbers in the environment will also help your child develop an awareness of letters and numbers.
Please keep us updated on Tapestry about any learning at home, special experiences or achievements. Every Wednesday, the children have an opportunity to share their photos during 'Tapestry Time'. This helps the children to develop speaking and listening skills, the confidence to speak in front of others, and allows us to celebrate the varied experiences of our Nursery children.
We will publish a weekly newsletter (every Friday) on Tapestry with information about what we have been learning that week and how you can continue to support your child at home.
Useful Websites:
- Busythings - logins from your class teacher
- Numberblocks
- Top Marks
- Hungry Little Minds
- Earth Cubs
Join our community
Do you have skills, knowledge and have lived experiences that could be beneficial to our pupils at Penwortham? For example, you may be a practising Buddhist or be of the Windrush generation. Your line of work may involve promoting sustainable living (for example) or you may have links to people who would be happy to run professional development sessions for members of Penwortham Primary School.
If so, please sign up to the Penwortham community!
Thank you