Welcome to Nursery
Caring Respect Empathy Courage Resilience
Our Nursery Team
Teacher – Mrs McKenna
Teaching Assistants – Mrs Cronin
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Our Early Years Nursery classroom is a calm and welcoming learning space which promotes curiosity and an excitement to explore and discover, often through new experiences. We quickly get to know each child’s unique personality and interests and design learning challenges matched to their developing skills. We encourage and support children to be independent, take risks and develop confidence and resilience. We work closely with families to settle our children into Nursery life as smoothly as possible and gently develop their confidence alongside their learning. With support from teachers and family at home, the children work hard on their goals. |
| Stories, books and reading are at the heart of what we do every day and children are supported to grow a love of reading, becoming confident and independent early readers by the end of Nursery. Mental health and well-being are high priority in Nursery and we teach children how to identify and talk about their feelings, consider the feelings of others and resolve problems together. We work hard to support the children to be happy and free from worry and anxieties. We promote positive self-talk and resilience and guide children through any difficulties they face. In the summer term, we support children in preparing for their next early years step, into Reception class. |
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| In Merton Bank Nursery, we are on the journey to achieve our Curiosity Approach Accreditation. This means that the Nursery team are making changes to the environment, our resources and our way of learning to reflect all things curious and magical! |
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We began our Curiosity Approach Accreditation journey in January 2023. We have made some wonderful changes with our Nursery environment which Authentic resources, learning through play, loose parts and real life experiences are vital for our curiosity journey. |
Our Curriculum
In Nursery we enjoy both guided mark making and taking part in Scribble Club.
Scribble Club, by Greg Botril, is encouraging the joy of mark making through
co-play. Scribble Club involves mark making in immersive play, mark making for a purpose and mark making for fun!
In Nursery our curriculum is driven by reading beautiful books. Our core texts drive our learning journey and help the children to become confident with retelling familiar stories.
In Maths we are learning about shapes. Here are lots of examples of our learning all about circles. We explored circles in nature, how to draw circles with lots of different materials, conducted circle treasure hunts, and used clay and handpicked sunflower seeds to create our own circle art work inspired by sunflowers.
We spend a lot of time in Nursery becoming secure with numbers, we really take time to explore what makes a number, how to write it, what it looks like in different forms, pictures and building amounts in many different ways.
General Information
Times of the school day
Doors open 8:45am, registration closes at 8.55am. Your child must be in school by 8.55am.
The nursery session ends at 11.45am
Your child will enter and leave school via the Merton Bank Road Nursery gate
Daily Routine
In Nursery, we are building up our stamina for learning, building an exciting and purposeful routine allows children to develop their skills ready to continue their Early Years journey into Reception. We come in to Nursery and sit at 'talking tables' where we have discussions around themes with the option of enjoying toast for breakfast, followed by structured short learning sessions as a whole class and in groups. Then children explore well thought out continuous provision areas both inside and outside for even more adventures. After tidy up time, we then sit at talking tables again to enjoy milk and a fruit snack before we join together again for further whole class learning sessions, singing, stories and calm down sensory time before we are collected by our families.
Collecting your child
Please queue by the fence opposite the front door to collect your child from the Nursery entrance, where you will be greeted by a member of the Nursery team. Safeguarding is high priority at Merton Bank so please understand we may need to check if someone else is picking your child up. Please always inform the office if someone new is collecting. Thank you for your understanding with this.
What a Nursery child needs
Black joggers, black leggings or black shorts with a white polo top and a blue school jumper or sweatshirt. Shoes should be comfortable, practical and ideally velcro so children can develop the skills of independently dressing. Please note that Nursery children will have sessions outdoors in all weathers and we provide waterproof suits and boots.
School provides all children with a school water bottle. Nursery staff attach a photograph of each child to easily identify their own bottle.
All children need a full set of spare clothes including socks and underwear, getting messy is all part of our learning journey!
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Parental Engagement In Nursery we regularly update children's Tapestry accounts with observations of their learning at school. We ask all families to engage with these posts and to send their own observations of learning and experiences from home. Please speak to a member of the Nursery team if you have any difficulties accessing your child's Tapestry account. 'Stay and play' workshops will be held once a half term, these will be offered currently to one family member per child due to the space in the Nursery and the sessions will have a new focus each time with activities and ideas to take away and try at home.
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Take a look at some of the exciting learning in Nursery during Autumn Term 2023
Click on a photograph above to see the enlarged image.
We have had so much fun in Nursery Autumn 2023, some of our favourites were definitely conker rolling, exploring loose parts play, making playdough, writing numbers, reading stories, exploring exciting adventures inside and outside, jumping in autumn leaves and of course we all love splashing in muddy puddles!