St Paul’s Nursery
Welcome to St Paul’s Nursery
Welcome to St Paul’s Nursery. St Paul’s Nursery would like to extend a warm welcome to you and your family. We provide a safe, happy and nurturing environment for your child as they begin their learning journey with us. We look forward to sharing your child’s journey of discovery and learning with you as we endeavour to develop a close working partnership to support your child’s learning. We believe that young children are unique individuals who have the right to be motivated, independent and successful learners. We aim to achieve this through a balance of play based and adult input, active learning and planned rich contexts that connect with children’s interests, all supported by highly skilled adults who nurture and facilitate learning. This booklet aims to provide you with information on the Early Years curriculum and the structure of the nursery.
Our Nursery Team
Class Teacher: Mrs Brocklesby
Teaching Assistant: Miss McCue and Mrs Mavi
Nursery Offer / Sessions and Costs
We offer universal 15 hours sessions for each child from 8.30am - 11.30am or 12.15pm - 3.15pm
30 hour places may be available for working parents which run from 8.30am - 2.30pm with an option to purchase an additional 45 minutes of childcare to extend your child’s day until 3.15pm.
Our Nursery Aims
✔ To maintain our focus on the unique child and create respectful relationships with families; we recognise that parents and carers are their child’s first educators.
✔ To provide adults in the setting who value and nurture children’s curiosity, creativity and desire to make sense of the world, giving time for their thoughts and ideas, and value to their work, their conversations and their feelings across the learning environments.
✔ To recognise and value children’s capabilities so that they develop confidence, independence and self-esteem to challenge and extend their thinking and learning.
✔ To provide a well-planned, motivating and versatile learning environment, which supports children as active learners, provoking their interest and linking indoors with outdoors.
✔ To offer children a balance of child initiated and adult led provision that is relevant and challenging and which motivates and inspires.
✔ To offer children a wide range of learning experiences which acknowledge the diversity of learning styles and builds on their understanding and exploration of the world.
✔ To support the children in continuing to the next phase of their education with enthusiasm and confidence.
Snacks
Your child will be provided with a small carton of milk and a piece of fruit each day.
If you prefer, you can provide your own piece of fruit/veg each day.
Your child will need a small water bottle which they can easily identify. This should be filled with water or sugar free squash. The bottle will need to be taken home at the end of every session to be washed and refilled.
If your child is staying at school over lunchtime (30 hour places only) a school meal can be purchased or you can provide a packed lunch.
Our Uniform
Although uniform is not compulsory in nursery some parents choose for their child to wear a school sweatshirt. We ask that children come in clothing that won’t cause any distress if it gets messy, therefore ‘practical’ clothing. We would like children to manage clothing independently for toileting so please no belts, braces, dungarees, laces etc.
Please ensure that a small bag with a change of clothing including pants and socks is left on your child’s peg. If your child has been changed during the nursery session, it is important that you ensure that their bag is restocked.
We have PE each Tuesday in the school hall and your child will need a pair of school jogging trousers (winter) or red shorts (summer) and a yellow school PE T-shirt. These are available from Michael Sehgal. All children should wear trainers on PE day.
Our outdoor and indoor provision is equally accessed every day in all weather so please bring appropriate outdoor clothing, winter coats, raincoat, hat, mitts or on sunny days please ensure that your child is protected with sun cream and a sun hat. All clothing should be clearly labelled.
To find out more about our school uniform, please scan the QR code. 9
Our Nursery Offer
The Framework is divided into 3 sections:
1. Characteristics of Effective Learning
2. Three ‘Prime Areas of Learning’
3. Four ‘Specific areas of Learning’
Characteristics of Effective Learning:
The characteristics of effective learning - how we learn - underpins the Early Years Foundation Stage. The ways in which children engage with others and their environment
✔ Playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically – support the children to remain effective and motivated learners.
✔ Playing and exploring, which is about finding out and exploring, playing with what they know and being willing to ‘have a go’.
✔ Active Learning, which is about being involved and concentrating, persevering and enjoying achieving what they set out to do.
✔ Creating and thinking critically, which is about having their own ideas, making links and choosing ways to do things.
Our Nursery Offer
To help children understand about how they can develop effective learning behaviours we actively encourage children to use their previous knowledge and understanding, we engage with their play extending and introducing new skills.
Learning skills include:
✔ Being independent
✔ Persevering
✔ Concentrating
✔ Being Creative
✔ Being Adventurous
✔ Co-operation
✔ Being Reflective
The framework also describes the seven areas of learning that are divided into Prime and specific areas. These “must be implemented through planned, purposeful play”.
Prime Areas
Personal, Social and Emotional
Development, which is about making relationships and getting along with other children and adults, having confidence and self-awareness, and being able to manage their feelings and behaviour.
Communication and Language, which is about developing good listening and attention skills, to have good understanding and also speak and express themselves clearly.
Physical Development, which is about large and small movements in a variety of ways, having good control and co-ordination, handling different tools and equipment well. It also covers health and self-care, looking at ways to keep healthy and safe.
Specific Areas
Literacy, which is about stories, rhymes, books and reading, and also mark making and writing.
Mathematics, which looks at numbers, counting, shape, space and measure. Understanding the World, which is about people and communities and helps children understand about the world they live in, including ICT.
Expressive Arts and Design, which develops different forms of expression, exploring music, dance and song, encouraging children to be creative in all respects. It also focuses on media and materials, imaginative and pretend play.
Our Environment
✔ We recognise that the environment plays a significant role in supporting children’s learning and development and so our indoor and outdoor spaces are designed to promote high levels of involvement and deep level learning.
✔ Well-planned, high quality continuous provision provides the children with familiar and consistent areas and resources that are open-ended and flexible, promoting all aspects of learning and development.
✔ We provide stimulating and challenging enhancements that give children new experiences and support new learning.
✔ To enable children to participate in “risky freedoms” we ensure that both adults and children are involved in processes of assessing risk/benefit.
✔ Our environments are created to reflect and respond to children’s predictable and specific needs and interests.
✔ Our daily routines are flexible and a key teaching strategy to embed learning. They are designed to provide sufficient time for children to become engrossed in self-initiated activity.
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.
