Miss Gregg and Miss Holmes would like to welcome you to our Nursery

at Howitt Primary Community School.

In our Nursery, we believe in giving all the children the best possible start to their school life. Essentially, this is done by providing a safe, happy and friendly environment for the children.

We know that children learn most effectively through play. Our dedicated staff create an environment in which purposeful play can take place.  Our role is to observe, interact, enable and extend the children’s play in order that they gradually come to understand the world around them. Our curriculum is broken down into termly topics focusing on the children and their interests and seasonal changes around them.

Nursery sessions

Am session 8.30-11.30am

Pm session 12.30-3.30pm

All day session 8.30-3.30pm (bring your own lunch)

Extra sessions will cost £3.50 per hour

Breakfast club is also available from 7.30 am

Other useful information about our nursery and the Early Years can be found in our nursery prospectus. Please take a look and if you have any questions please come in and see the nursery staff.

Learning in Nursery

Each half term the children will learn and play through different topic themes and through their own interests. 

There will also be the overarching theme of seasonal changes as we go through the year and the children will become more familiar about the outdoors and the world around them. 

Autumn 1 - This half term our topic is 'Marvellous Me'. 

The children will taking part in lots of different activities focusing on  settling into the nursery, themselves, family and friends. They will have a range of activities and games where they will be encouraged to take turns and share. The children will be given the opportunity to talk about themselves, their interests, family and friends. Children will explore the natural world around them using their senses and will have different experiences to talk about. Through songs and rhymes the children will learn all about their bodies and be able to name some body parts. We will also be learning all about colour and colour mixing and the children will be able to explore and learn new skills in our art area.

Autumn 2 - This half term our topic is 'Awesome Autumn '.

The children will taking part in lots of different activities focusing on the season autumn. We will be learning all about the seasonal changes that happen at this time of year and will be spending lots of time outside exploring the natural environment and the weather. The children will also have the opportunity to learn about different things people celebrate within this season, such as, harvest, Bonfire Night, Diwali and then leading onto Christmas.

Spring 1 - This half term our topic is 'Tell Me a Story'.

This half term the children will be focusing on their favourite stories and themes. We start the half term with a story the children enjoy called ‘Supertato’ and will be reading this story and some of the other Supertato stories from the series. We will then move onto looking at some traditional tales and look at how these stories are told. All the way through the half term the children will have different activities relating to our focus stories as well as stories of their own choosing.

The children will also continue to learn all about the different parts of a book including the front cover, back cover, spine, , blurb (which tells us a little bit about the story), the title and the author – the children will know most of these already so please ask them when you share stories at home.

We continue to learn about different celebrations throughout the year and this half term the children will be learning all about how people celebrate Chinese New Year – Tuesday 1^st February – The year of the Tiger.

The children will continue to have a wide variety of learning opportunities though our continuous provision both indoors and outdoors and will be encouraged to share their interests and favourite things with us.

Nursery Library

Please come and choose a book from the nursery library. You can keep the book for as long as you need and change it when you are ready for a new one. Use the red book to draw pictures and ask your grown-up to write about what you like about the book/story (follow the instructions on the front cover).

If you have any questions please come and ask me, Miss Gregg in their nursery. 

Events in Nursery

Here are some photos showing you some of the fun activities we do in nursery.

World Book Day

This year for World Book Day the nursery children will took part in our ‘Bedtime Stories’ day. The children were invited to wear their pyjamas and nightgowns.

Throughout the day the adults in nursery shared stories and asked the children to choose their favourite stories to read.

Our bedtime story session was to promote the enjoyment of reading with a family member, listening and joining in with familiar stories.

Please email me with photos of you and your child sharing a bedtime story.

Nursery Art Week

We have learning all about the artist Jackson Pollock. We looked at his style of painting and how he dribbles, splats and flicks the paint. We recreated this with different activities both inside and outside using lots and lots of paint.

We all got a bit messy!

Nursery Stay and Learn  - Numbers and Counting

Parents and carers were invited into nursery to see how we teach and how the children learn numbers and counting.

There were lots of games and activities for us to play with.

Take a look at our photos

Helping your child at home

During your child’s induction sessions you will have been given a ‘Welcome to Nursery Pack’, if you haven’t received this pack please come and see me (Miss Gregg). This welcome pack contains many different resources and activities that supports the learning that takes place in nursery, including numbers and counting, phonics, mark making and writing, singing etc.

Throughout the year you and your child will be given different activity packs that will support your child’s learning at different stages. These activity packs will contain phonic or math’s activities as well as topic based and interest based activities.

During this half term your child will be given their own library book pack. Your child can change their library book here at nursery on a regular basis and we encourage children to choose their book independently. In the pack there will be large plain book where your child can draw a picture about their favourite part of the story. Please encourage your child to mark-make, draw or write something about the book and talk about what they liked or did not like about it.

For more information please see our nursery newsletters.