Class 1- Nursery and Reception
Welcome to Class 1 - we are the Nursery and Reception children here at Kellington Primary School!
In the Early Years, our curriculum is mapped out with key themed half terms and special weeks to inspire our children and widen their experiences of the world around them. These themes will include marvellous me, celebrations around the world, fairy tales and superheroes and how does your garden grow?
Our day:
Our day starts at 8:45am when the doors open and children are collected either at 11:45am or 3:15pm depending on the sessions they are attending.
Our teaching tools:
This year the Nursery and Reception children will be following the White Rose Scheme for maths where we will cover a variety of foundational skills - such as number rhymes, number recognition, spotting patterns and deepening our understanding of numbers to 5, 10 and beyond.
For English, we will be following ‘Talk 4 Writing’ and ‘Magic of Story’ where we will be introduced to new books each week. These sessions will focus on developing a love of reading, vocabulary, story structure and how we can alter stories to make them our own.
Phonics is taught using Read, Write, Inc. Children in Reception read every day within their phonics lessons. There is a link to further phonics information at the bottom of this page.
Reading for Pleasure - All of our children access our school library on a fortnightly rotation where they select a book that is appealing to them. They are not expected to read this book - this is for them to listen to, discuss with you and enjoy alongside any other books you may wish to share with them.
Please see our website plans for more information for each half term’s coverage.
Nursery specific learning
Our Nursery follows the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, whereby all children learn and develop, are kept healthy and safe, and develop a varied range of knowledge and skills. Nursery is the beginning of a child’s journey through school and our curriculum, which is progressive in skill and knowledge, has been carefully designed to enable all children to learn, develop and grow through play.
At Kellington, we aim to provide high expectations for all, ensuring children have the opportunity to develop independent skills in an enabling environment. Our Nursery children have both separate and joint learning opportunities with our Reception children in small group sessions and within our continuous provision. The indoor and outdoor learning environment is exciting, engaging and challenging, and allows children to explore, investigate, safely take risks and solve problems throughout the seven areas of learning.
Our experienced Early Years staff take time to get to know our children and their families, find out what is special to them and strive to engage children in the highest quality teaching in order to maximise success for all, and prepare children for the next phase of their education.
To keep up to date with what your child is learning and to have a sneak peak into their day, staff use the Tapestry app to connect with parents. This allows you to see annotated photographs of your child in action at school and to share their achievements at home with school.
For our Reception children we set home learning weekly on Tapestry and this will include:
- Numbots - this is an online platform which promotes developing understanding of counting, place value and addition and subtraction. Through games, the children not only develop these skills but also build up their fluency when answering questions.
- Phonics - Individualised phonics sheets and books, which are matched to the pupil’s level, will be sent home for children to practise their sounding out and blending of words. Please practise this with your child little and often - we recommend a daily 5 minute practice.
- Reading of RWI phonics book daily (at home)- Please note this in your child's reading record with the date and a comment.Reading for pleasure of books of their choice- adults can also read to children.
PE Days
Our PE day is Monday, just for the Reception children.
PE clothes: white t-shirt, black PE shorts, black tracksuit for winter months and pair of trainers/plimsolls
How you can support your child at home:
We encourage you to support your child’s development and confidence in becoming increasingly independent with some key activities to better prepare them for joining Class 1. This could include:
- Supporting their independence in toileting and washing their hands
- Eating with a knife and fork and opening items within a lunch box
- Getting themselves dress - putting on their clothes, shoes and coats
- Listening to stories
- Practising conversations: talking together about their homes, families and the world around them. An example of this could be talking about numbers you notice on doors as you go for a walk.
- Having play dates with other children to support their social skills
- Encouraging sharing and tolerance
- Practise recognising their name
- Developing fine motor control by building hand strength: threading beads, stacking bricks or using scissors can help develop this skill
Playing together to develop concentration
For further information about Nursery places, please click the link below.
Useful Websites
Here are a couple of websites we use with the children in their learning and in provision. These offer a range of videos to watch and activities to join in with to promote their phonics and maths skills.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b08bzfnh/numberblocks
