This Term

Below you will find information about what the Nursery classes are learning about this term.  

Please also read our topic page to find out more about our Topic Work.

Autumn 2021

Communication and Language Development

Each day we have a question of the day which we discuss at snack time through a circle time approach which develops children’s communication and language; we also have time to share our news with peers.  Every week we will add a talk ticket to SCHOOP, which will include a question linked to our work in nursery to discuss at home. We encourage children to share their answers with their peers back in nursery.  Throughout the first half term children will listen to stories, participate in small group games, activities to develop their communication, interaction and listening skills.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development. 

We will spend time helping the new starters to settle into the nursery environment. This will involve developing children’s independence through putting their own coats on and fastening where possible. There will be a big focus on hand washing ensuring that children are washing their hands correctly at several points throughout the session.  We are introducing children to our positive behaviour management strategies including our super star chart, star of the day and Achievosaurs. We will spend time introducing the nursery rules and routines. Each session children will chat at snack time as they sit together to have their milk and fruit.

Physical Development

During this half term we will introduce the climbing and outdoor equipment including the wheeled toys to the children.  We will promote healthy eating through our snack time and our healthy week. We will also make Mr. Potato heads. Self-care is a focus this half term. We will be developing children’s independence using the toilet, washing their hands and discussing how we clean our teeth at home.  Gross and fine motor skills are developed through all our provision such as ribbon sticks, hoops, threading beads, peg boards, writing in crazy foam, tracing on tactile letters, using the interactive white board, tweezers to pick up small objects and building with bricks.  We will be completing; Dough Disco and Squiggle Whilst you Wiggle focuses. There will also be a ‘Funky Fingers’ challenge each week.

 Literacy

We enhance our provision and activities to practise both gross and fine motor control to support writing. We have a variety of mark making equipment available including chunky crayons, chalks, paint brushes, pencils and felt tips.  We also have mark making proformas throughout our role-play provision in the Home Corner, and for the roles of people who help us. Focus mark making activities will include writing invitations, gift tags and birthday cards.   We will introduce phase one letters and sounds activities and later in the year we will start introducing letter sounds through phase two letters and sounds sessions as appropriate. We also use the ‘read write inc’ formation rhymes to support children in using the correct letter formation. We discuss the importance of using the correct pencil grasp. To support children in recognising and writing their name every child has a name card which they can access independently throughout the session and an additional one which they can keep at home.  We will have daily story time and will introduce Incy Wincy Spider as our first Talk for Writing unit this year. Each half term we learn a nursery rhyme by heart, this half term our focus nursery rhyme will be “Miss Polly had a Dolly”.

Mathematics

Children will learn about shape and space through provision in the malleable, water and construction areas.  We focus on a specific number most weeks and this is called our ‘star number’. Children are encouraged to complete several activities relating to this including recognising the number and its value. Children will practise number formation using various materials such as paint and crazy foam.  During the first half term our focus will be on counting with one to one correspondence. Activities will include counting spikes for a hedgehog’s back and counting candles for birthday cakes. We will also begin to recognise numbers and will go on a hunt around the nursery to look for numbers in the environment. Specific focus activities on number recognition will include ordering numbers and matching the numbers on bikes to their correct parking spaces.  We will complete jigsaws, maths games and contribute towards making number lines for our provision areas.  Children will complete sponge printing to demonstrate their recognition of shapes and numbers.

 Understanding the World

Children will learn about some of the people who help us to look after ourselves such as doctors, hairdressers and dentists by looking at situation clips on the computer and they will develop their understanding of people that help to keep us safe through visits, (most likely virtual this year), from the care taker, a police officer and a paramedic. We have fire fighter and police officer role play in our outside environment too.  Children will observe autumn materials in the playground to highlight the seasonal changes that are taking place.  We will talk about our journey to school and landmarks in the local area, looking at photos of the café, post box, fish and chip shop, garage, traffic lights and bakers.  Children have daily access to interactive whiteboard, bee bots and light panel.

 Creative Development

Children will be introduced to our areas of provision and encouraged to develop their own creativity throughout these areas. Specific focuses to support children’s creative development include creating self portraits and exploring paints to create music on our music wall. Children will be introduced to their own mini me’s to support their imaginative play in the construction and small world areas. We will have regular enhancements relating to our theme throughout the half term.