Our Nursery Curriculum
Little Ducks Nursery, housed in The Lodge, provides the children with a dedicated, high-quality learning environment, with free-flow access to a secure outdoor space. We aim for our children to learn and grow in a happy, challenging, supportive and secure environment. Our early years provision enables all children to engage in free-flow play, with the environment carefully designed to enable children to independently lead their learning through discovery, exploration, and investigation, exploring the world around them.
Under the leadership of our experienced EYFS Lead, our nursery is staffed by an EYs specially trained teacher and enthusiastic, caring, and experienced nursery staff. We build on children’s knowledge and experiences, providing opportunities for progression, extension, and challenge. Daily adult-led activities focus on the EYFS curriculum (listed below) including phonics*, literacy (story telling) and maths. These activities are varied and engaging for young children providing both opportunities to learn new knowledge and skills in a safe space as well as having the time to revisit and embed previous learning to enjoy a sense of ‘mastery’.
The children follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which has seven areas of learning. These are:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The children are also able to enjoy weekly sessions at our Forest School: here the children can experience outdoor learning in our school’s dedicated woodland area. The children will use our extensive school grounds including playground, playing fields, allotment, and trim trail.
*Phonics primarily focusses on the 7 aspects of Phase 1 (pre letter sound learning) through sound discrimination, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and voice sounds.
Here at St James Primary, we feel it is important that parents have a good insight into a child’s learning. We use an ‘online learning journal’ called Tapestry. Tapestry enables staff to take photographs/videos and make written observations of significant learning your child accomplishes throughout their learning journey.
This also means that you can comment on any observation and importantly upload your own photos/videos of what your child is learning at home, providing a holistic view of each child.
To ensure the safeguarding of the children, everything that is added to Tapestry can only be viewed by the school staff that use the system and you as parents. Tapestry is hosted in the UK on dedicated, secure servers.