Nursery Newsletter Spring 2024

Areas of Learning

Personal, Social and Emotion Development: We will be exploring different emotions, what they look like and how to deal with them. This will include dealing with their own and the emotions of others. In particular we will be looking at happy, sad, angry and excited. We will be welcoming our new children to the setting and helping them to follow our class rules.

Communication and Language: We will be exploring a variety of new words, concentrating on words to help with our imagination and creating stories about who we are and what we want to be. We will also be concentrating on asking and answering different styles of questions such as who, what, where. We will also be practising the skills of listening and responding to others in play and in group conversations.

Physical Development: The first part of this area of learning is gross motor skills, these are all the big movements such as climbing, negotiating space and ball skills. The children will practise most of these movements outside. The second part of this area is fine motor skills. This includes anything from filling and emptying containers to pencil control. We will be using a variety of activities to help increase muscle control in the children's fingers which will lead to better pencil control. You can help with this at home by doing any activity that increases the grip between the thumb and the first two fingers on your child's hand. These activities can include threading, cutting and any form of mark making.

Maths: During the term we will be taking every opportunity to practise number recognition and one to one counting. This is something you can do all the time at home, in the supermarket or when helping with dinner, i.e. Can you get me two tins of soup? We also need to practise the comparison between numbers, i.e. Practice using the terms more than, fewer than and as many as by asking: Are there more grapes than tomatoes? or are there fewer tomatoes than grapes? We will also be providing opportunities to explore size, weight, capacity and different shapes.

We will be practising using comparative language to describe different things such as longer, shorter, longest, shortest. We start with comparing two things, i.e. which is big? Which is small? We then build up to comparing more, i.e. which is the biggest/smallest? Which ones are bigger/smaller? We do this for size, capacity, weight and length.

Literacy: This area involves everything from listening and enjoying stories to recognising letters to writing letters and words. We will have key stories throughout the term that we will be looking, as well as a different rhyme or song each week, such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk. We will also be looking at some Non-Fiction texts about Dinosaurs and natural disasters. We will also be visiting our academy values each half term through a story. Spring 1's value is truth and we are going to read 'Honest to Goodness Truth' and for spring 2 we are reading a book about respect. You may find that your child knows the rhyme of the week but please practise with them at home, so they can build up their confidence to share their performance with a variety of people. It is also very important to enjoy stories at home. Children will not only have quality time with their own adults, but increase their vocabulary and ability to create their own stories.

Understanding the World: This area is very knowledge based. We will be learning about history, geography, science and Religious Education. We be learning about the past beyond living memory by looking at dinosaurs. We will be exploring the science behind natural disasters and looking at the religious meaning behind celebrating Easter. We will also be learning about other celebrations such as Chinese new year and pancake day. Look out for different areas as we go through the term on our weekly newsletter so you can share your own knowledge with your child

Expressive Arts and Design: This area explores music, songs, role play, construction, anything that involves creativity and imagination. We will be providing the children with lots of different opportunities to use their own ideas to create their own picture, structure or a whole new world. This area covers everything from role play to creating with different media

Class Dojo: At St Botolphs we use Class Dojo as a positive behaviour system, rewarding children for their amazing work. We will also use Class Dojo to keep parents updated with different events happening at school and any exciting things that are happening in class. Parents can also contact the class teachers directly with any questions they have.

Tapestry: We will still be using Tapestry to show parents/ carers what the children have been doing that week in more detail. Please check this on a regular basis and when your child does wonderful things at home, you can post photographs or short videos on Tapestry for the teachers to see and comment on.

Our core Christian values for the term will be Truth in the first part of the term and then Respect in the second half of term. We will explore these themes in our class worships.

How can you help at home?

Communication and Language- Chat, Play, Learn

Talking and listening are very important parts of early learning and these skills are the key ways that all areas of learning are supported. Chatting about what is happening in everyday activities as well as learning new things while watching a TV programme, reading a story or playing a game all help children learn new vocabulary. Best of all is just taking time to have a conversation about anything at all! Ideas for children:

Share a story and talk about it. What was your favourite bit? Can you guess what might happen at the end? How did the characters feel when something happened? Could you join in with parts of the story? Are there parts where you can use different voices? Try and share your favourite story from when you were a child or even your favourite nursery rhyme.

Create a reading den. Find somewhere cosy, snuggle up and read your favourite book to yourself or a toy friend. Choose a story, comic or an information book. Sometimes even reading a book under the covers with a torch makes things even more special.

Keep an eye out for further hints and tips on class dojo!

There is also an app called 50 things do to before you are 5. It gives ideas of what you can do with your child and it tries to keep things as free as possible. Click the link below to download the app. You can choose which area of the country you are in too so it can be more specific to our own area. Coming soon: Watch Class Dojo for 50 things challenges.

This year, we will be sending out 'homework' to do with the link above, where we have allocated some activities to do each half term. The website gives you lots of ideas on how to take part in each activity and we will be awarding certificates for those families that try their hardest to complete them. Watch out for further information!