Our Nursery Team:
Teacher: Mrs Maric
HLTA: Mrs Burton
Our teachers rotate around and support each groups learning every week.
Teaching Assistants who support our children are: Mrs Nadin, Mrs Thorne and Mrs Langhor
Autumn 2
Autumn 1
This term we will be covering a range of traditional tales. This topic will cover the whole of the Spring term.
We are really looking forward to our Summer term topic 'Out and About!'
Long Term Plan 2024-2025
The books below are the stories the children will hear and read often throughout their time in Nursery. Stories that children know well, inspire their love of reading and enable the children to become confident in the retelling of stories. The Children will widen their vocabulary through exploring new words and will develop skills in rhythm, rhyme, intonation and expression; to name but a few! We hope you enjoy sharing these stories at home as much as we enjoy reading them at Nursery!
Key texts for Nursery
Autumn
- We’re going on a bear hunt
- Three Little Pigs
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
Spring
- Pardon said the giraffe
- Rumble in the jungle
- Oi frog
- The Gingerbread Man
Summer
- Handa's surprise
- Monkey Puzzle
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PE days:
PE kits will be kept on your child's peg and sent home at the end of every half term for washing. PE kit should be provided in a bag and include a t-shirt and a pair of shorts (this does not need to have school logo or be any particular colour). As the children will be in the hall, we do not require any trainers or plimsoles in their PE bags.
Although the Nursery team will be on hand to help and support all children, we will be encouraging all children to be independent. Please practice at home with your child getting changed and putting on their own shoes and socks. This is will help us to ensure the children get the most out of their PE slots.
Please ensure all PE kit and Nursery uniform items are all clearly named to avoid lost property.
Focus group time:
We have adult lead Literacy and Mathematics activities every day in our starfish groups. Within the literacy session we provide the children engaging games that teach oral blending and phonemic awareness. We also provide the children with a rage of activities that support their number and problem solving skills.
At Twin Sails we all share the same ethos...
Every Child, Every Day, Every Possibility!
We really want you to be a part of our shared beliefs and encourage you to be a part of your child’s learning experience. We would love it if you could contribute to your child’s learning journey throughout this year. This could be a WOW moment when your child has totally amazed you with their knowledge, got dressed on their own, been on a family adventure, writing numbers/letters, or it could be a certificate of your child’s achievements outside of school. Feel free to add in any photos if you would like to!
This will help us to build a picture of the whole child, not just the one we see in the classroom! Please fine the WOW moment star attached, these are also available on the Nursery Gate.
On the cloud below, we would love to hear the hopes, dreams and aspirations that you have for your child by the end of their year in Nursery. We cannot wait to find out!
Thank you,
The Nursery Team
Hopes and Dreams
To finish off our topic ‘Me in my world’ we will be making a family photo album for the children across the Nursery to share. This will be a lovely personalised book to celebrate our uniqueness and individuality of each child. The book will be freely available to all children in the Nursery to access and celebrate their families with their peers and adults.
To do this, please complete the attached layout to include your child’s name, a photo of their family and list who is who in the photo.
Thank you for your continued support.
The Nursery Team
Spring Term
The children are enjoying learning our number formation rhymes and we are amazed to see how they are practising these during a range of mark making opportunities. We thought you may like the link to the number formation cards, so you could practise these at home!
Nursery Reading with Mr Hurst - Step 1
Nursery Holding a Pencil - Step 2
Nursery Writing - Step 3
Nursery Writing - Step 4
Mrs Maric Reading a Story
Goldilocks and the Three Bears Puppet Show
How to make a bear mask
Autumn Workshop- Learning and development in Nursery
We held our learning and development workshop in November to help familiarise our families with our Nursery curriculum and provide ideas to further support their children. Thank you to everyone who joined us and for the very positive feedback. If you couldn't make it, please find the presentation below.
Key Texts for 2024-2025
Our Reading Diet
Please click on the Admissions link below to find out how to apply for a space in our Nursery
Important Changes to Funded Places in the Nursery
We offer all children a place in our Nursery, starting from after their third birthday.
We offer 15 hours free funding for all children and 30 hours free funding for those families that are eligible.
Following recently updated guidance from the Department of Education, in relation to Early Years Education and Childcare Entitlements, we will be altering our session times slightly. This action is required in order to ensure that free, unbroken access is available to government funded hours for children in pre-school education settings, where they are accessing 6 hours a day (30 hours a week)
Therefore, our bookable hours will now be as follows:
| A | 30 Hours | 8.30am - 2.30pm | 30 hour week, fully funded |
| Additional Hours | In line with our existing charges and remissions policy - the additional hour from 2.30pm - 3.30pm will cost £5 | ||
| B | 15 Hours | 8.30am - 11.30am | 15 hour week, funded place |
| C | 15 Hours | 12.30pm - 3.30pm | 15 hour week, funded place |
| D | Additional hours for Lunch (for 15 hour funded children) | If your child is eligible for 15 hours and would like to stay for lunch following the morning session, or arrive for lunch before the afternoon session, then this is charged at £5 | |
| E | Regular additional hours (for 15 hour funded sessions) | If your child is eligible for 15 hours, and you would like to purchase additional morning or afternoon sessions (3 hours) - this will be charged at £15 on top of the lunch. Due to the demand in places, this will be subject to availability - please contact the School Office to discuss. | |
Beyond these hours provided by our Nursery staff, the existing wraparound care offer remains. Please refer to our Wraparound Care terms and conditions, found on the website.
These new changes are aligned with the new guidance and have been approved by our Trust. If you have any questions, do contact the School Office in the first instance.
Please collect an application form from our School Office in order to apply for your child's place.
Late Collection Charges
From September, the school will be bringing into effect a late pick-up charge for children not collected on time. This will incur at all pickups - 11.30am, 2.30pm or 3.30pm. This will be at the rate of £5 for the first 10 minutes and then additional 10 minutes thereafter.
The booking system will reflect these changes after Easter 2025, and the new additional hours will be available to book via your MCAS account.
Twin Sails Nursery 2023.mp4
Bread Baking Fun!
Our Nursery children had a fantastic time baking bread! As part of our story exploration of The Little Red Hen, the children got hands-on with the bread-making process. They absolutely loved kneading the dough and discussing all the exciting things that happen during cooking.
We’re so proud of all their hard work and creativity!
The Tiger Who Came To Tea
Our Nursery children have been having an amazing time immersing themselves in the story by Judith Kerr. It has been wonderful to see their creativity shine! The children have enjoyed role playing teatime with a tiger and recreating scenes from the book. They've also been busy writing lists of food to offer the tiger when he visits! The children have enjoyed finding out lots of tiger facts to share with their friends. We've also been investigating how to mark make stripes in different ways!
Nursery Christmas Singing!
In the run up to the Christmas holidays, our Nursery children enjoyed a morning of festive magic!
The children bought the Christmas spirit to life with their beautiful renditions of Christmas songs. Despite their very young age, they sang with such joy and enthusiasm, filling everyone's hearts with festive cheer!
Clean teeth and healthy smiles!
Nursery have been learning lots about the importance of keeping our teeth healthy and clean. Every child has received a tooth brushing kit with a toothbrush, toothpaste and nhs advice on how to keep a healthy smile! A big thank you to Upton Dental for their very kind contribution of mini toothpastes.
We love hearing about how the children have been practising their toothbrushing skills at home. One of the children told us, "I brushed my teeth with my new toothbrush. They're white and shiny!"
We learnt a song together to remind us how to keep our teeth clean:
(To the tune of Jingle bells)
Brush your teeth, brush your teeth
Give them all a treat.
Brush up and down and all around
To keep them clean and neat.
In the morning and at night
Clean them twice a day.
Brush up and down and all around
Keep fillings well away!
Me in My World
The Starfish very quickly settled into a new year in nursery. We made new friends in our Starfish groups. We learnt about our nursery routines, our superstar rules and explored our classroom and outdoor environment.
This term's topic is called 'Me in my world'. We learnt about differences and similarities between ourselves and our friends and families. The children created wonderful self portraits by carefully studying their reflection in mirrors and talking about the facial features we could see.
Our very special 'All about me' bag started visiting children's homes this term. We take it in turns to fill the bag with our favourite and special items to show our groups and find out more about our friends. We loved sharing family photographs, special drawings and talking about children's favourite toys and activities.
Our families were also invited to a nursery workshop to find out about supporting our learning and development at home. See our information for families page for more ideas.
