Lower Wortley Primary School

Each day we continue to have a question which we discuss at snack time through a circle time approach, and we share our news with peers.  Every week we have a talk ticket, which is a question linked to our learning to discuss at home. We share these with our peers back in nursery.  Children will listen to stories, participate in small group games, activities with puppets and singing to develop their communication, interaction and listening skills.  

The children are responding well to our positive behaviour management strategies including our super star chart, star of the day, achievosaurs, certificates and specific praise.   We are using the Colour Monster story to support children in recognising their own emotions. From the story characters we will support children in developing strategies to deal with their emotions.  Children are showing increasing confidence in sharing their news and creating amazing work for our ‘Busy at Home’ and ‘WOW’ walls.  During the spring term children will be involved in playing circle games outside and games inside to develop their skills in sharing, taking turns and working together. 

Our movement play area has been hugely popular with the children and provides excellent provision for the children to develop their physical skills. We are also completing specific movement activities through our ‘Squiggle whilst you Wiggle’ work.  Each week we continue to have a focus in our ‘Funky Fingers’ area in addition to the ‘Dough Disco’ to develop children’s fine motor control. 

We have a specific mark making area with superhero writing capes which encourage the children to mark make with superpowers using a variety of mark making equipment.  We also have mark making proformas throughout our role-play provision.  Focus mark making activities include writing Mother’s Day cards and creating our own story maps for the ‘Brown Bear’ story. To support children in recognising and writing their name every child has a name card which they can access independently. We model the correct pencil grasp and use formation rhymes as appropriate to support children in writing their name.  We are also completing regular guided reading and level one phonics activities.   We have a daily story time where we share stories linked to our theme and literacy spine. ‘Brown Bear’ is our Talk for Writing unit this term. Children will be encouraged to retell the story on our story map. Our focus rhymes will be ‘Five Little Snowmen Fat’ and ‘Five Little Speckled Frogs’, which are both linked to our theme work.  

Children are encouraged to complete several activities relating to our ‘star number’ including saying the rhyme, recognising the number and its value in Numicon and with other objects. Children will practise number formation in crazy foam, coloured sand, glitter and paint. During this term we will look at shape, space and measures. Children will collect shapes from the nursery environment and sort them on the tuff tray according to their shape. We will make and interactive display of shapes and look for them in the outside area.  We are planting our own bean seeds and looking at growth through Jaspers Beanstalk. We will measure objects and children in nursery to compare heights, create patterns with threading beads, and develop our language of capacity when filling and emptying containers in the water area.  

We will discuss what happens in winter and in spring and go on walks to look for evidence of the seasons in our school grounds.   We will create experiments to explore ice melting, talk about cold places such as the North and South Pole and learn about animals that live in cold places.  Children will plant and help look after seeds and plants. They will be introduced to vocabulary to discuss the parts of flowers. We will learn about the lifecycles of frogs, stick insects and ducks.  Children will continue to have access to the computers, interactive board, light panel and the remote-control cars. 

Children will create their own models of what they expect their seeds and eggs to grow and hatch into. They will be supported with resources to fulfil their imaginative ideas as appropriate.  We will sing our focus rhymes and will have puppets and props to support these.  Throughout provision children are encouraged to use their own mini me’s to support their imaginative play in the construction and small world areas.  Enhancements to our provision include a ‘Frozen Castle’ and ‘Garden Centre’ role-play area indoors and an igloo and digging area outside.