Nursery Key Information

Nursery Sessions

Our nursery sessions run from 8.45 until 11.45 Monday to Friday. If you are eligible for 30 hours we run our Educare service in the afternoon from 11.45 until either 2.15 or 3.15.
Educare focuses on seasonal changes and celebrations and explores those themes more extensively through play. There are also weekly cooking sessions and two weekly dance sessions which prepare children for performances for the rest of the school and parents and carers.

Nursery routine

At 8.45 drop off in Key Worker groups.
9.15 - registration and calendar.
9.30 - All the children are given the opportunity to play to learn within our provision both inside and outside.
10.15 - tidy up.
10.25 - Focus activities.
10.50 - Circle time focussing on topic, maths, phonics, literacy or nurture.
11.45 – Children staying for the morning session will go home and those staying for Educare will go to lunch.

Settling in

By working in true partnership with parents we aim to provide a stimulating, challenging environment which is a warm, friendly extension of home, where children and adults can explore, have fun, play, talk and learn together, developing as happy, confident and independent individuals within their community.
We hold dear the African proverb “It takes a whole village to educate a child“ believing that we have a significant role to play, along with parents, families, other professionals and the whole of the wider community in raising the young citizens of the society.
Nursery staff make a home visit to all new families. This an informal, friendly opportunity to say hello, introduce ourselves and get to know a little bit about the child and his/her family. Parents often talk about this visit in a positive way and seem really happy to meet staff on their own ‘home ground.’ This first meeting is where the relationship and partnership begins.
Before your child starts with us, we hold a Welcome Evening for new parents, where we spend time together, talking about the way we work, giving a clear message to our families about our philosophy and ethos.
In your child's first week, children are brought into nursery in key groups, for our phased transition. Each day the length of time in our setting is increased. This allows time for children to become totally familiar with the space, indoors and outdoors, the staff and the routine and feel happy and secure about starting nursery with us.
All children are different – some may settle in very quickly, whilst others need a little more time. We also acknowledge this separation can be as upsetting for parents as it is for children and so we offer comfort and patience to all during this transition time. Time spent on settling in, is time well invested for the children’s security and confidence.
It is really important that children are collected on time, as searching the sea of faces for your mum or dad, nana or grandad, and finding no-one there can be really upsetting when you’re only 3 or 4 years old. We ask that parents inform us of the people who are most likely to collect their child. In the interests of safeguarding all our children, we ask parents to ensure anyone collecting their child knows their child’s date of birth for all new adults to use when collecting children at the end of the session. Anyone the staff don’t recognise, will not be allowed to leave the building with a child, unless they provide the correct password.

Key person

Every child belongs to a little family group when they start nursery, with a key worker, who will love and take care of them, as if they were their own. These groups meet every day to talk, have conversations together, plan the children’s play, as well engage in little focused games and activities that help develop children’s learning.
We have several family groups; Monkey infants, Giraffe Calves, Elephant Calves and Lion cubs, with key persons who are responsible for children’s progress – observing, recording, planning, tracking, assessing.

Reading in Nursery

Children in Nursery choose one book that they can change as many times as they like. We refer to this text as ‘Our Together Time Book’ and it is designed to help children harbour a love for books. There are many stories and facts to learn and share. By allowing them to select their own, the children have more control and therefore can have access to a wide range of texts shared with their families and read together. This should make up 15 minutes of your child’s reading activity per day. The purpose of this book is to develop a deep love of stories and is to be shared entirely with their family. Please read it together as many times as you like and enjoy talking about what you have loved and what you have learned. This shared reading helps give children access to a wide range of vocabulary and also introduce them to story structures. Being read to allows children to experience the musicality of our language and helps give them practice at separating this reading melody into individual notes of sound that they will begin to learn as letters as they progress in their development.

Beckstone Primary School

Nursery Sessions

Nursery routine

Settling in

Key person

Reading in Nursery