Welcome to our Afternoon Nursery Page!

Please scroll down to the bottom of the page to see all of our latest news and photographs.

Welcome 

What a fantastic start to the new school year! All the children have settled in so well to their new school routine and are looking so smart in their new ‘big boy’ or ‘big girl’ uniform.

In nursery we are committed to ensuring full coverage of the EYFS Curriculum, as well as acting upon current research into effective Early Years pedagogy when planning purposeful, first-hand experiences and opportunities.

During our afternoon session we enable children to be active, independent learners by providing a safe, stimulating and exciting indoor and outdoor learning environment, in which children are encouraged and supported to develop critical thinking skills in order to achieve their maximum potential.

This page will be used to keep you up to date with photographs of all our fabulous learning that takes place during the afternoon session. I aim to keep this page updated regularly with our current topics and any important information. However, if you have any queries please don’t hesitate to speak to me at the start or the end of each day.

Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Duke.

Useful Information

• Snack money is £1.50 per week and to be paid on a Monday morning if possible please or at the start of each term. Children receive snack twice a day and any extra money is spent on baking/playdough ingredients and messy play activities.

• Home Time – the Nursery door will be opened at 3.00pm until 3.05pm for children leaving nursery at 3pm (Please note if you pick up your child later than this time you will be charged £2 for the child care cost of the 3pm-3.30pm session). The Nursery door will then close until 3.20pm when it will be opened for children leaving at 3.30pm. This is to enable parents to pick up nursery children from school first before older siblings. We hope this does not cause any inconvenience to our parents but opening and closing the door can be very disruptive to our nursery children who are still learning and it also takes a member of staff away from the children at these times.

• School App – please can all parents ensure that they have downloaded the school app. The school app is a really important school to home communication link as we often send out reminders and important information on this. Information about downloading the app can be found on the ‘parents’ section of the school website or you can search ‘St George’s Catholic’ in the app store. Please make sure that you have push notifications enabled to receive any updates relevant to our class.

• Unfortunately this year due to coronavirus our lending library and busy bags are no longer available to borrow in our nursery cloakroom. Afternoon Nursery are now sending home a Home School Communication book to provide your child with a weekly activity instead. This book will be sent home at the end of each week and we kindly ask that your child brings the book back to school the following Monday in time for our circle time activity. 

• Stay and Play - Stay and play sessions are unfortunately cancelled this year as we are following Government Guidance and not allowing parent's into the school building at the moment. 

Please take a look at the resources below to support your child’s learning at home.

Our First Week in Nursery!

We started the term by reading ‘While we can’t hug by Eoin McLaughlin’ which is a story about coronavirus. This was a great introduction to the changes that have occurred over the last few months and enabled the children to talk about their news and changes that they have noticed in school. This was really beneficial to all of the children as it gave them time to talk about our worries and concerns in the strange times we are currently living in.

After our story and circle time activities the children realised that we didn’t need to worry and all of the new rules and extra hand washing routines are in place to keep us safe. The children have really adapted to the new rules and routines - I am very proud of them!

Autumn Term 1

This term our topics include ‘This is Me’ with a book focus of 'Only one you by Linda Kranz'. Then we will celebrate 'Autumn' and towards the end of the term we will have another book focus of 'Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson'. 

This term we will be reading a selection of stories related to our current topics. It would be great if you could order and share some of the stories with your child that we will be reading over the upcoming weeks. Children love to read and complete activities on stories that they are already familiar with from home. Below are a selection of the stories we will be focusing on this term.

This is me!

During this topic we have been learning all about ourselves with a focus especially upon the prime areas of learning (communication and language, physical development and PSED). Below are a variety of photographs of some of the activities we have enjoyed. 

17.09.2020 - Home School Communication Books

A big thank you to all the parents for helping your child to complete their home learning activity last week and for bringing the book back to school promptly. All the children have really enjoyed sharing their work with their friends. Using this book really helps your child's communication and language skills and it encourages them to share their news confidently.

We will continue to send these books out on a Friday with any news about our current topics and a home learning activity in it. We kindly ask if it is returned to school on a Monday in time for our weekly circle time news activity. 

02.10.2020 – Our Sensory Walk

During our ‘this is me’ topic we labelled our body parts on a large outline of a body and talked about our senses during a carpet time activity. The children were able to describe what we use each of our senses for. Afterwards we went on a sensory walk in our outdoor area describing what we could see, hear, smell and feel throughout our walk.

Autumn is here!

This week we introduced the topic 'autumn' by going on different autumn walks in the outdoor area. We had lots of fun during our listening walk, colour walk and our spotting the signs of autumn walk that we went on throughout the week. We noticed that the leaves had changed colour, the grass was squelchy from all the rain, the apple tree was full of ripe apples and it was becoming colder. We also heard the geese honking in the sky whilst travelling to their winter home. 

During our autumn walks we saw lots of signs of autumn. Can you play the game below? What do you remember seeing on our autumn walks?

01.10.2020 - Nursery/Number Rhyme of the Week

In Afternoon Nursery we have a nursery/number rhyme of the week. Nursery and number songs are very important during the EYFS as they help children to learn new words, develop their non-verbal skills and encourage children’s literacy skills. Thank you for your support at home practicing our rhyme of the week, all the leaves are falling down.  I have added a video of the children singing the rhyme below.  

04.11.2020 – Bonfire Night

In preparation for bonfire night tomorrow we had a firework fun filled afternoon. We talked about firework safety during our carpet time activity and then we created our own firework pictures in the indoor and the outdoor area.

In the outdoor area we used powder paint and large mark making tools to create our colourful fireworks. We had so much fun colour mixing, jumping in the multi-coloured puddles and using large gross motor movements to create a variety of fireworks. It was a good job we changed into our puddle suits and wellies because we got very messy!

26.11.2020

We are fast approaching the end of term, with only three weeks to go until we break up for the Christmas holidays. I understand that Christmas will be different for most families this year with lots of annual activities; such as visiting Father Christmas and relatives may have been cancelled. Unfortunately in school it is a little bit different too, as we have had to cancel our Nativity and our Christmas stay and play sessions. However, I have jam packed the next three weeks with the most magical, the most sparkly, the most exciting Christmas count down that we have ever had in Afternoon Nursery. I think it is vital that the children enjoy the Christmas period more than ever this year.

Over the next three weeks we will be writing to Father Christmas, pretending to be Elves in the toy workshop, making our own environmentally friendly reindeer dust and completing lots of Christmas crafts including our 2021 calendar to take home.  We will also be exploring the seven areas of learning through our book focus, The Snowman and the Snowdog created by Raymond Briggs. We will then finish the term with our Christmas party day on last day of term (17^th December) and a special movie with a hot chocolate treat to finish our current book topic.

I will add some photographs of our activities below. We cannot wait to show you the fun we have had!

08.03.2021 – Welcome back to Nursery!

We are all so excited to welcome the children back to school finally after the lock down 3 break and to finally meet our new starters. This week we have a big focus on the prime areas of development (communication and language, physical development and PSED) and outdoor play due to many children being stuck indoors for the majority of the lockdown. The children will be playing in the outdoor area all week with engaging and fun activities. I will add some photographs during the week for you to see how much fun we have during our school day!

Next week we will be starting our new topic Easter with a book focus of ‘We’re going on an egg hunt by Laura Hughes’. I have added a video of the story below if you would like to share this story with your child at home so they are familiar with the text before we start the topic.

18.03.2021

This week we have started our Easter topic. We have had so much fun going on an egg hunt in the indoor and the outdoor area, completing our observational drawings of a daffodil and performing our rhyme of the week. Thank you for your continued support at home practicing the rhyme, the children were all very eager to perform it to the staff and their friends.

12.04.2021

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break. Thank you for completing the home school communication book activities during the holidays the children had so much fun sharing their news during our circle time activity using the pictures they had created at home. It is really helpful when we use our Home learning books during circle time to help us remember our holiday news and to develop our communication and language skills. 

This term our topic is ‘On the Farm’ with a book focus of Peter Rabbit and then Rosie’s walk during our Afternoon Nursery sessions. I have added the stories below if you would like to share them at home with your child so he/she is familiar with the text and to give your child the opportunity to talk about the fun activities we have been completing in school. As always I will add photographs of some of the learning activities that we have enjoyed during the topic below.

Our Five Senses Scavenger Hunt

Today we had so much fun showing our friends the objects we found during our scavenger hunt at home. We used our home school communication books to show the different objects we had stuck into or drawn in our books. Then we went on our own school scavenger hunt in the outdoor area. We worked together in small groups to find objects and draw the object using the sheet and clipboard. Afterwards we talked about the different object we found at home and in school during a circle time activity.

13.05.2021 - Home School Communication Book 

This week we will be starting our phonic home learning challenges. Below is the Song of Sounds song to practice at home with your child. Thank you for your continued support at home.