Little Bumble
St Augustine’s Nursery Brochure
Welcome
“Where tiny wings learn to fly and little hearts begin to blossom.”
At St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School, our Nursery provides a caring and stimulating environment where every child is valued and supported.
Our Nursery is school-based and led by a qualified teacher, supported by experienced teaching assistants who are passionate about early years education.
We are proud of the welcoming and inspiring space we have created, designed to nurture curiosity and a love of learning. Every child matters to us. We celebrate diversity and ensure that all individual needs are met so that every child feels included and respected.
Our approach is centred on igniting each child’s natural curiosity and sense of wonder. Through exploration of natural and interesting objects, we encourage investigation and discovery, helping children to develop deep understanding and confidence.
Our aim is for every child to flourish—becoming independent, confident, caring, and responsible learners who leave Nursery with a strong foundation and a real love of learning.
Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Approach
We believe every child is unique, talented, and loved by God. From the very beginning, we celebrate each child’s individuality and ensure they feel safe, valued, and cared for.
In line with the Department for Education’s Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021), our curriculum and environment are carefully planned to provide rich, meaningful experiences. We encourage children to develop their own ideas, express opinions, make independent choices, and work and play collaboratively.
At St Augustine’s, every child has a voice. We listen attentively and foster positive relationships with families and our local community, promoting mutual respect and shared learning.
In Nursery, we prepare children for Reception by building the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need for future success. Our nurturing environment ensures that every child feels secure and supported, enabling them to reach their full potential.
Our ethos promotes a positive attitude to learning and respect for others, laying the foundations for lifelong learning.
The information provided here will help prepare yourself and your child for the exciting adventure of starting Nursery. We aim to give you the information you need and some ideas for how you can help prepare your child for school. We recognise the value of working in partnership with families as working together greatly supports your child’s all-round development and learning. This will result in them becoming a valuable member of our school community and to achieve their potential in the future.
Important Information
15 hours – 8:45 – 11:45am or 12:15 – 3:00pm Nursery Sessions
30 hours – 9:00 – 3:00pm
Additional hours can be paid for on top of funded hours at £8 per hour.
Arrival and Collection
Our Nursery has its own dedicated gate with a secure entry system, ensuring the safety of all children. Each morning, the Nursery team will be there to greet you and warmly welcome your child.
At the end of the day/session, please collect your child from the same gate.
If your child starts or finishes Nursery at lunchtime, drop-off and collection will take place at the same gate.
We aim to make every transition smooth, safe, and reassuring for both children and parents
Snacks and Milk
We can top up water bottles, giving the children access to water throughout the day.
In the mornings and afternoons, children enjoy a snack as part of our healthy snack routine.
Milk is also available for Nursery children.
School Lunch
A hot school lunch can be purchased for your Nursery child at a cost of £2.75 per day, or you may choose to send a packed lunch instead.
Our Uniform
Nursery children should wear:
✔ A green school jumper or cardigan
✔ A white polo shirt
To make toileting easier and encourage independence, we recommend school PE jogging bottoms or dark jogging bottoms. However, if you feel your child can manage wearing grey school trousers or a school skirt/pinafore, we would love to see them in full uniform too.
There will be days when additional items are needed for outdoor adventures, but we will let you know in advance.
Uniform sizes for ages 2–3 years and 3–4 years are available from our supplier, Michael Sehgal. Click here to view our uniform.
Please ensure ALL items of uniform are clearly labelled.
Our Nursery Offer
Nursery (2-4 year old children)
2 and 3 years olds will be able to start a funded 15 or 30 hour Nursery place immediately following their birthday.
Your child will be eligible for either:
2) 30 hours free nursery education per week during the school term time
Attendance at Little Bumble Nursery however does not guarantee a place in Reception class when your child is of school age. or
1) 15 hours free nursery education per week during the school term time Wraparound Care Offer (from age 3)
Our Wraparound Offer
7.30am - 8.45am and 3.15pm - 6.00pm charged at £8 per hour
The EYFS Curriculum
As stated in the Department for Education Statutory Framework for Early Years Foundation Stage (2021) There are four overarching principles for the EYFS.
These are:
✔ Every child is a unique child – Every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
✔ Children can learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
✔ Children learn and develop well in enabling environments in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents or carers
✔ Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates. The Framework covers the education and care of all children in the early years including children with special educational needs
Learning and Development
There are seven areas of learning development. All areas are important and interconnected.
The prime areas are:
✔ Communication and Language; listening, attention and understanding, speaking.
✔ Physical Development; developing gross motor and fine motor skills.
✔ Personal, Social and Emotional Development; building relationships with others, managing self and self-regulation.
The children are also supported in four specific areas, through which the prime areas are strengthened and applied.
These specific areas are:
✔ Literacy; comprehension, word reading and writing
✔ Mathematics; Number and numerical patterns
✔ Understanding the World; People, Culture and Communities, the natural world, past and present
✔ Expressive Arts and Design; creating with materials, being imaginative and expressive
What Will Our EYFS Curriculum Look Like?
In Nursery, much emphasis is given to personal, social and emotional development, especially across the first term but continually across the year.
Children will be nurtured to feel happy, safe and confident in school, ensuring good progress across all areas of learning. They are encouraged in forming good relationships with peers and adults in school and becoming familiar with new routines.
Our EYFS Curriculum
Our curriculum has been designed to be stimulating and fun and to build upon interests the children already have. Their confidence will quickly develop and they will be supported, stretched and challenged appropriately. The children will have access to continuous provision, indoors and outdoors, throughout the day. This will also be enhanced by a range of structured play activities stemming from our topic or children’s interests. The children will have regular experiences to develop their social awareness. These will include trips and welcoming visitors to school. Children will have daily group times to support maths, pre phonics skills, understanding the world and mark making.
Our EYFS Curriculum
Reading is a fundamental priority within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), and in Nursery we create a rich environment that nurtures early literacy skills.
Children are provided with frequent and varied opportunities to engage with books and develop a love for reading. As part of our daily routine, they are read to at least twice a day, enjoying stories, rhymes, and poems that spark imagination and language development. In addition, we model effective reading strategies, demonstrating how to handle books, recognise print, and understand that text carries meaning. Through these experiences, we aim to build strong foundations for reading confidence and comprehension.
The Early Years Indoor Environment
There are many opportunities for learning across our continuous provision, both indoors and outside. Not all learning is structured so the children have opportunity to explore using loose parts and natural resources.
Our areas across the provision are changed and developed regularly in order to embrace the children’s interests and to inspire learning. Inside the classroom the children will have access to the following areas:
Reading Zone
A calm space where the children can develop their love of reading.
An outdoor reading area complete with benches and toys to match the stories for children to further develop a love of reading.
Maths Zone
A fun space to develop understanding of numbers.
Writing Zone
The place to explore a range of mark making equipment and try some new writing experiences.
Role Play
Role play where the children can explore their own ideas, develop vocabulary and take on any role they choose.
Creation Station
A messy area where the children can explore with paints, glue and anything else messy!
Construction Site
An area for our little engineers.
The Early Years Outdoor Environment
In our outdoor provision the children will have access to the following:
Water play
A fun area where children can make a mess with water and explore volume and capacity.
Sand Play
A sand pit full of diggers and tools to help build and enjoy sensory learning.
Mud Kitchen
A very messy area to have fun with mud.
Building zone
An area for our little engineers to build even bigger projects.
Outdoor Art Zone
A creative space where the children can explore art and design using bigger scale resources.
Theatre
A creative area to explore singing and dancing and be whoever we want to be.
Help Prepare Your Child for Nursery
These are just a few ideas of how you can help to prepare your child for Nursery. You will be doing lots of these already!
✔ Share books and stories.
✔ Go to the public library and share a range of books.
✔ Sing nursery rhymes with your child.
✔ Play turn-taking games such as snakes and ladders; make sure your child learns how to win and lose as well.
✔ Have play opportunities with other children, especially over the summer holidays.
✔ Talk about numbers and teach your child to count objects accurately;you could involve your child in helping around the house by counting out the bowls or spoons needed to lay the table, counting steps up and down the stairs, look at house numbers or numbers on cars or buses as you go for a walk.
✔ Talk about mathematical concepts such as: taller, shorter, heavier, lighter, full, half-full, empty, less than, more than, higher, lower.
✔ Let your child handle money and learn to recognise coins.
✔ Talk about shapes and colours.
✔ Encourage your child to dress and undress themselves, including using buttons and zips and putting on their own shoes.
✔ Encourage your child to use the toilet by themselves, including flushing the chain and washing their hands afterwards. We will be encouraging your child to be as independent as possible with this. Please have a chat with us if your child needs any support in this area.
