Welcome to Nursery
Class Teacher: Mrs Bell
Teaching Assistant: Miss Wharton
Welcome to the Nursery at St Joseph’s, Billingham. Mrs Bell is the Class Teacher with Miss Wharton supporting.
“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.” Henri Matisse. With this in mind, we aim to offer fun and engaging activities that encourage children’s independence to grow, although we know that a lot of the time a 3 or 4 year old can do it themselves!
Nursery provides the first experience of school life for our children; therefore, we plan and create our learning from our love of play. At St Joseph’s, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, securing essential skills in seven key areas, these being:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Math
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
During their time in Nursery, children will be nurture and encouraged to achieve key milestones and build a firm foundation prior to their reception year. Learning takes place both indoor and outdoor and allows for children to grasp a range of concepts within areas of continuous provision. Provision includes areas to role play, share stories, explore water, sand and mud as well as making and creating with blocks and other small world resources. We also take lead from children’s interests to enhance their Nursery experience; for example, creating a doctor’s surgery for role play, building ramps with blocks and drainpipes to enable cars to move at speed.
Children thrive with an established routine, so we have a Rhythm of the day to keep us paced. This allows for shared carpet time, phonics input, music, movement and story time as well as time for outdoor learning and snack. Children are welcome to lend a book from the lending library, to share a story with their family at home.
We love working with our littles people and helping to shape their future, and look forward to welcoming all children and their families to our wonderful school.
Nursery Newsletters
Nursery Curriculum Map
Helpful Links
Learning conversations and telling stories
What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage: A guide for parents