Nursery

Curriculum Newsletter 

Nursery 

Welcome back to Darwin Class! 

 

STEAM  

This term our STEAM focus is Art. We will be exploring colour in our environment, looking at how colour changes in tone and shade and exploring what happens when we mix colours together.  We will use all our senses to be fully immersed into the world of art, exploring textures and describing how things feel, searching for materials to use to create our art with and closely observing our artwork so that we can make decisions about what we like and dislike.  Children will learn that art can be produced in many ways using many different materials and methods/ techniques. We will look at paintings and sculptures from a variety of famous artists. The children will help to create their picture frames and art gallery in the classroom to display their own art.  

Additional clothing  

We anticipate this term will be quite messy based on the hands-on approach to exploring art that we intend to immerse the children in. Therefore, we would appreciate it if you could provide a spare top that we can wear over our uniform to protect us from paint and glue splats. Naturally, we have aprons for children to use during art times, but we intend to explore some whole class painting experiments so additional clothing would be of great benefit to the children.  

 

 

Term four Curriculum overview  

This term we will continue to build on prior knowledge and skills in Maths, Literacy, Understanding the world and Expressive arts and Design. At Nursery age, it is important for children to have regular opportunities to revisit what we have already learned to deepen our understanding and ready ourselves for new learning content.  

 

By the end of the term, we hope that children will become more confident at the following:  

Reading 

Our love for reading continues to grow! 

This term we will be continuing to build the foundations to early phonics by teaching children to discriminate sounds, including environmental, musical, body percussion and voice sounds. Children were very excited to be introduced to Fred the Phonics Frog and now understand his special powers. As a result of this, the children will begin to recognise the letter sounds and the accompanying picture/phrase. For example; ‘m’ - Maisie Mountain Mountain.  They will then begin to understand words by listening to the individual sounds of a word and blending them together. For example, m-a-t (mat). This is done in a very subtle way through lots of games and activities which keep children interested and engaged in phonics.  

 

We are also celebrating the continued success of ‘Talk through stories’ this term. Children are becoming more engaged in story time, listening with intent, deepening their ability to recall familiar stories and retell them within their own learning time. It is providing the perfect opportunity for children to really explore key texts, understand the principle of the story, learn new vocabulary and explore new characters.  

 

Please ensure that you find daily opportunities to read to your child and support them on their journey to becoming a reader. 

 

If you have any concerns, please come and speak to us. We tend to have more time at the end of the day as our priority in the morning is to settle the children and begin our learning. 

 

Thank you for your continued support.  

 

Christopher Morten 

Nursery Lead