Welcome to Nursery! Miss Platt is the class teacher.
A warm welcome to St. Joseph’s RCP Nursery School. We recognise that choosing a nursery place for your child is a big step and leaving them for the first time can be quite daunting. At St. Joseph’s our highly experienced staff provide the best possible standard of care and early years education.
The EYFS was revised in September 2020 and was legally effective from 1st September 2021 for all providers of early years education and care.
The Government’s two key aims for the changes to the EYFS;
- To improve outcomes at age five, particularly in early language and literacy
- Reduce workload so that practitioners can spend more time interacting with children in their care.
Click here to access the statutory guidance
The Development Matters offers a top-level view of how children develop and learn for all early years practitioners, including:
- childminders
- staff in nurseries
- nursery schools
- school nursery and reception classes in school
The guidance can help meet the requirements of the early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework.
Please click on the link here to find out more.
Planning Our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
Our Nursery School considers the all round development of your child. We provide opportunities which enable your child to; exercise options and express ideas, reflect on experience and information, share thoughts, make decisions, make discoveries and explore and engage in first hand experiences. Our curriculum is designed to be accessible for all children, regardless of any special educational need or disability.
Our allocation of time, space and equipment will provide opportunities for your child to develop to their potential, physically, linguistically, intellectually, emotionally, socially and morally. Through carefully planned activities we support and enhance your child’s learning ensuring they make at least good progress over time. We plan themes on an annual basis (long term plans) but these are not ‘set in stone’ and are fluid to address the ever growing and changing needs of all our children. We seem them as more of a ‘working document’!
Plans for the medium term (half termly) and short term (weekly) are displayed in school. If you would like to find out more about our school curriculum, please speak to Miss Platt who will be happy to help.
Our curriculum is designed around the needs of our young children and is organised into seven areas of Learning and Development.
These are:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts & Design
Here are the main components of each of the seven areas.
Communication and Language experiences are about:
- Listening, attention and Understanding
- Speaking
Personal, Social and Emotional experiences are about:
- Self Regulation
- Managing Self
- Building Relationships
Physical Development experiences are about:
- Gross Motor Skills
- Fine Motor Skills
Literacy experiences are about:
- Comprehension
- Word Reading
- Writing
Mathematics experiences are about:
- Number
- Numerical Patterns
Understanding the World experiences are about:
- Past and Present
- People, Cultures and Communities
Expressive Arts & Design experiences are about:
- Creating with Materials
- Being Imaginative and Expressive
Little Wandle
In Nursery, we use the Little Wandle Foundations for Phonics materials to promote, encourage and enhance children’s early phonics skills. There are a series of games and activities included in the document which can be used 1-1 or in small groups. It is very important that children are able to discriminate between different sounds before being able to sound them out verbally.
Children will:
- develop their language structures;
- increase their vocabulary;
- begin to distinguish between sounds in words;
- speak clearly and audibly;
- become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration;
- listen attentively;
- explore and experiment with sounds and words
Activities to support learning include:
- storytelling;
- singing songs;
- listening to rhymes and repeating patterns and refrains;
- playing alliterative games;
- using creative language in role play, drama and dance;
- identifying sounds in names, words in the environment etc.