Nursery
Welcome to our Nursery!
Our Class Teacher is Mrs Barbara Speer
Our Teaching Assistant is Mrs Lynette Walker
Our Support Assistant is Miss Charmaine Heritage
Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), which is how the Government and Early Years professionals describe the time in your child's life between birth and age 5.
All 3 and 4 year olds are entitled to 15 hours per week free early education from the September following their third birthday.
At Gade Valley, our Nursery is led by an experienced, qualified teacher and as such, we pride ourselves on delivering a high quality education experience that helps to prepare children for school life.
We currently (2023/24) provide flexible Nursery sessions 5 days per week during term times. 15 hours funding can be used over 5 mornings or 2.5 days (2 full days and 1 morning session). In addition, we are pleased to offer 30 hour funded and non-funded places during term times.
Nursery Session Times
Morning Nursery 8.45 – 11.45 am
Pupils in receipt of 30 hours funding 8.45 am - 3:15 pm
Please ensure you drop off and collect your child on time from the Nursery Classroom.
We have one intake per year beginning in September, with 30 places available. We would love to show you around, please call or e-mail the school office to make an appointment.
If you have any questions about our Nursery facilities or the application process, please visit the admissions page, or call or e-mail the school office.
The Parents' Guide link below will help answer many of your questions and help you through your child's future learning and successes.
Half-Termly Curriculum Letters
Our Learning Journey 2024/25
Book of the week: We're Going on an Egg Hunt.
The children have had a wonderful week learning about Easter. During 'busy fingers' the children created their own Easter egg patterns using pasta. They then painted their eggs with different colours and took part in an Easter hunt in the garden.
Happy Easter!
Book of the week: Wakey, Wakey
The children have enjoyed looking for signs of spring in the nursery garden. Having spent the last few weeks watching the daffodils grow, counting them and drawing them, many of the children were excited to try painting them.
The children also made the most of the sunshine by drawing around each others shadows and recognising which was biggest and smallest.
World Book Day
Book of the week: There's a Monster in your Book
The nursery children enjoy sharing books and stories with different classes from big school each day this week.
On World Book Day, everyone cam to school dressed as their favourite book character and proudly too part in the whole school sharing assembly.
In the afternoon, we waved our streamers as we ran around the field in our costumes.
Pancake Day!
The children loved decorating their pancakes with fruit, honey, jam or sugar at snack time. They were delicious.
Book of the week: Jasper's Beanstalk
The children enjoyed listening to the story and practised reading the days of week. One of our Busy Finger activities was to place a bean in a bag with a wet paper towel and we are hoping to watch our beans grow over the next few weeks and eventually plant them in a pot and see which bean stalk will grow the tallest.
At the end of the week the children observed the Robin's and birds visiting the nursery garden so we decided to make some bird feeders to give them a little treat.
Book of the week: Oliver's Fruit Salad
The children have really enjoyed learning about different fruits, where they come and how they grow. We know that eating fruit is good for us and helps us to stay healthy. During Snack Time, we made out own fruit salad using our fine motor skills to cut up the different fruits we wanted to try.
We all agreed that fruit salad is delicious!
Take a look at some of the exciting PE skills we have been learning this term. Climbing, Ball Skills, Hand-Eye Coordination using balloons, Dragon Dancing and Yoga.
Book of the week: The Great Race
The children have enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year and making decorations to celebrate the Year of the Snake. We worked together to make a Giant Snake using collage, Bendy Snakes using our fine motor skills to fold the paper and developing our scissor skills to create lanterns.
Theme: Oral Hygiene
This week the children have been learning about the importance of keeping our teeth clean. We watched some early years programmes about going to the Dentist and shared some information books to explain what the Dentist does and how they help us to keep our teeth healthy. The children enjoyed pretending to be a dentist and check the teeth of their friends and we used our story of the week: The Selfish Crocodile, to explain what happens if we forget to look after our teeth.
We also spent some time looking for birds in the nursery garden and made some colourful bird models that we showed to the rest of the school in Sharing Assembly.
Theme: Winnie the Pooh Day
This week the children were excited to celebrate Winnie the Pooh day with a teddy bear’s picnic.
We listened to lots of Winnie the Pooh short stories and made our own jam and honey sandwiches.
During our Physical Development session, we kept the party theme going and practised our ball control skills using balloons. We tried very hard to keep our balloons in the air and stop them from falling on the floor.
It was very tricky but great fun.
Book of the week: Happy New Year Spot!
This week the children shared their experiences of Christmas and New Year with their friends.
As the weather was cold, we created I
ice decorations by collecting natural items from the garden and adding some sparkly sprinkles. We then filled our cups with water and left them outside over night so that the water would freeze. We were very excited to see our glittery icicles the next morning. We were also amazed to see the giant ice sheet in the water tray.
Book of the week: The Snowman
We have had a very busy Christmas week. Father Christmas visited the nursery which was very exciting. We sang him a Christmas song and were very pleased to receive a little surprise.
During 'active learning' the children worked hard to create their own painted Snowman which made into a calendar for 2025.
Thank you for all your gifts, cards and kind words. We hope you all have an amazing Christmas break and look forward to seeing all the children in the New Year.
Christmas Performance
The children worked so hard to learn all the songs for the school performance and loved dressing up and performing in front of the whole school, parents, and family members.
Book of the week: Portside Pirates
We had lots of fun being pirates this week, we dress up as pirates and made a pirate ship in the garden. We followed our maps around the big school looking for treasure but noticed that X marked a spot in the woods. The jolly pirates found the treasure hidden behind a tree.
Book of the week: This Is Our House
This week the children been talking about how they can be kind, caring and best friends.
They enjoyed playing with the puppets and putting on their own puppet shows to entertain all their friends in the nursery.
In PE we have been learning to dance with scarves. We were excited to show everyone our dance during Friday sharing assembly.
Physical Development
EYFS Harvest Song - Big Red Combine Harvester
Book of the week: Don't Hog the Hedge
In busy fingers, we made our own hedgehogs using leaves from the Nursery garden.
Book of the week: The Little Red Hen
The children enjoyed listening to the story about the Little Red Hen making bread so we decided to have a go at making our own bread. The children watched while we mixed all the ingredients together and then had a go at kneading and shaping their dough into the shape of a hedgehog.
They all took their bread home to be baked and we are looking forward to hearing all about how it tasted.
Book of the week: The Scarecrow's Secret
The children have been learning all about Scarecrows. After reading the story, they were able to explain that a Scarecrow helps the farmer to grow his crops by stopping birds from eating the seeds.
During active learning the children made their own little scarecrows and together we made a big scarecrow for the Nursery garden. We had lots of fun stuffing him with straw.
Book of the week: The Feelings Fair
This week the children have been learning about the feelings. We talked about how we could make others feel happy by including the in our games. During active learning, the children were attentive and more confident to ask their friends if they could play. We had lots of fun playing with the conkers we had collected and sharing toys outside.
Book of the week: What Makes Me a ME?
The children had great fun taking about how we are all the same but different. They used mirrors to look at their faces and painted their own self portrait. They were very pleased to see their paintings on display in the classroom.
Book of the week: Starting School
This week the children started their morning 'Busy Finger' activities. Over the course of the week, they all painted their first picture and confidently explained what they had painted.
The Nursery children have made an excellent start to the new year and have enjoyed taking part in lots of different activities both in the Nursery building and garden. We have also enjoyed exploring the main school and meeting Mr Barron.
Our Learning Journey 2023/24
Enterprise Week 2024
We are being creative in the nursery, we have been painting our hands and making handprint tiles. If you would like to make a handprint tile, come and see us during the Enterprise Sale on Friday after school. Tiles cost £2.00 each. Make as many as you like!
From Caterpillar to Butterfly
The children were very excited to see the butterflies take flight this week. We took the out to the wild garden area and after taking a closer look at each of the butterflies, we watched them fly away. It was very exciting!
Sports Week
We had so much fun with our families on sports morning using lots of different equipment.
Thank you all for sharing this special event with us.
Book of the week: The Gingerbread Man
This week the children had loots of fun learning and acting out the story of the gingerbread man. Some of the children man a huge gingerbread man by drawing around one child and then working together to paint it. Once the paint was dry, they added eyes, a nose, and some buttons. They were very proud to show their giant gingerbread man to the rest of the school in sharing assembly.
Book of the week: Little Red Riding Hood
We had lots of fun making maps to get to Granny's house which the children had created in the woods this week.
During busy fingers, they worked hard to use their pincer grip to pick up matchsticks with tweezers, weaving strips of card to make their own baskets by weaving strips of card and threading fruit to put in the baskets. It was great to make the most of the sunshine out in the Nursery garden!
Book of the week: The Tiger who came to Tea
We had so much fun this week enjoying the sunshine and making full use of the garden. During busy fingers, the children used their fine motors skills creating plates of food for the tiger, making playdough cakes for a picnic, painting stripy tiger faces and going on a tiger hunt in the woods.
On Friday, the children were very excited when a tiger came to join us at snack time. He ate Mrs Speer's cupcakes and a carton of milk.
Book of the week: The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch
This week we have been talking about our experiences of being at the seaside. We all had lots of fun memories to share during carpet time and lots of our busy finger activities were linked to our learning. Sadly, the beautiful weather at the beginning of the week did not last until Friday.
Book of the week: Superworm
On Wild Wednesday, we went to explore the changes that Spring has made to the woods. The day before we had all watched two deer munching some of the plants in the woods behind the Nursery building.
The children were amazed to see how many Bluebells and Whitebells had grown over the Easter holidays. Using the class iPad, the children took it in turns to take some pictures of them as we walked around. Sadly, the deer were no where to be seen.
World Book Day
The children were very excited to come to nursery dressed as their favourite book characters. We joined the rest of the school for Assembly and confidently walked around the hall proudly showing everybody our costumes.
On Friday, we joined Year 3 for some buddy reading and in the afternoon we took part in the Police Community Day, talking to the Police Officers, exploring lots of vehicles and meeting some police dogs.
What a great week!
Book of the week: Jasper's Beanstalk
The children enjoyed listening to the story and joining in with the days of the week. During active learning, some of the children made a beanstalk picture by dipping their wellies in green painted and walking up a long piece of paper. In busy fingers, the children planted their own bean in a bag and now they are waiting to see the begin to grow. We visited the duck eggs each day and were very excited to see them hatch.
Chinese New Year - The Year of the Dragon
The children enjoyed taking part in lots of dragon dancing this week. They worked together to make dragon head and practised dancing under material together. In sharing assembly, the children made dragon masks and Chinese lanterns using collage.
Dragon Dance
National Story Telling Week
This week we listened to the story, 'Mr Dad is a Grizzly Bear' and 'My Mum is a Lioness'. The children were asked to think about which animal their Mum of Dad might be and they shared some very interesting ideas from Flamingos to Dogs.
The children enjoyed being visited by a secret reader each day who came to share a story and loved buddy reading with Year 2 on Friday.
Book of the week: Oliver's Vegetables
We were visited by Mr Masters this week who came to sing some songs and tell us a story from the bible. The children took part in the story by creating sound effects.
We also learned where potatoes and carrots come from and had a go at peeling some carrots to make vegetable soup. The children who wanted to, enjoyed some vegetable soup during snack time and we made a list of all the vegetables we could taste. The children thought the soup was delicious.
Happy Birthday Winnie the Pooh!
This week the children enjoyed celebrating Winnie the Pooh's birthday.
They all brought in their favourite Teddy bears and cuddly toys which they took for a picnic in the woods. We enjoyed tasting some delicious honey, singing Happy birthday and pretending to blow out all the candles. We then played our favourite party game - Hide and Seek.
Book of the week: Happy New Year, Spot!
The children were excited to come back to school and share all their news about Christmas. They each drew a picture of their favourite Christmas present which they shared with the class.
After watching the spectacular New Year fireworks on the interactive whiteboard, the children used chalk to create their own firework pictures on the Nursery playground.
Book of the week: Sleepy Jesus
The children enjoyed performing their song for both the whole school in our dress rehearsal and all their parents and families. During busy fingers, they used their fine motor skills to create Christmas pictures with buttons, create their own Christmas jumpers, make snowflakes using scissors, decorate our class wreath with leaves and played snowball skittles. They were also excited to see Mr West who came and read a story. One Christmas jumper day, the children took part in sharing assembly winning the class reading challenge for the most Golden Tickets and Roman won a Wonka Bar. Well done Nursery!
Book of the week: The Snowman.
The children enjoyed listening to the story and were able to tell us all about snowmen they have made at home when it snows. We also watched the film to make the story come to life.
The children were very excited to find ice in the garden and after spending some time exploring the ice they talked about how if felt such as cold, smooth and slippery. They had great fun finding different tools to smash the ice with and then investigated how the hard ice changed into water when they held it in their hands.
Book of the week: Oh, Christmas Tree!
It’s nearly Christmas! After listening to our story of the week, the children enjoyed putting up the class Christmas Tree. We decorated it with every sparkly decoration in the box and placed the angel on the top. In ‘busy fingers’, we have been making paperchains to decorate the classroom and working hard to learn all the songs for our Christmas performance. We joined the whole school to decorate the school Christmas tree, placing our decorations carefully on the tree with the help of some or our friends in Year 6.
Phonics Phase 1
This term the children has been focusing on their listening skills. This week the children went for a listening walk around the school. When we came back to the Nursery, the children shared all the things they were able to hear, these included: Children playing, bouncing balls, vehicles on the road and leaves rustling in the trees. One group heard an aeroplane in the sky and another group heard pots banging in the school kitchen.
Next time you're out for a walk the children have been asked to listen carefully to what they can hear.
Book of the week: Owl Babies
The children loved hearing and joining in with our story of the week - Owl Babies. Some of the children knew that Owls only wake up at night time and have big eyes to help them see in the dark. During busy fingers, they used their counting skills to match the correct number of feathers to their owls using their fingers, created their own owls using toilet rolls tubes and playdough and practised their pencil control by drawing the outline of an owl. They also painted their own poppy which will be on show in the school hall as part of our annual Remembrance Day display.
Finally, on Friday we had our first 'Buddy Reading' session with Year 5, sharing books and stories.
Book of the week: Don't Hog the Hedge
The children enjoyed listening to our story of the week and finding out that some animals sleep all through the winter like Hatty the Hedgehog and her friends. The children used leaves that had fallen from the trees in the garden to decorate their own hedgehog, threaded leaves onto a piece of wool using a needle and decorated autumn pictures with colourful buttons. After singing our song of the week, the children worked together to sweep all the leaves from the playground and starting making piles for animals to use to make their winter homes.
Book of the week: Room on the Broom
We had so much fun reading our book of the week and pretending to be witches. We enjoyed joining in with the story every morning and knew the story really well by the end of the week. We also dressing up in the nursery garden and pretending to be witches on broomsticks. Our busy finger activities included: wrapping up mummies with wool, creating witches faces, decorating pumpkins and making handprint spiders with googly eyes.
We hope you have a wonderful half term break and look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday, 31st October.
Book of the week: Stanley's Stick
We have been finding sticks in the garden and the woods and using our imagination to decide what our stick will be. Our busy finger activities included: painting with sticks, comparing the size of sticks, making sticky hedgehogs and drawing pictures of our stick creations.
We also carried out a number hunt in the big school, looking for numbers up to 10.
Book of the week: This is our House
Our story of the week taught us about the importance of sharing and being a good friend. During busy fingers we talked about and learnt to recognise emotions. We all made sad faces and happy faces and then we made our own pictures. In maths the children talked about how many people lived in their house, drew and counted them. We also created different 2D shapes using playdough.
Book of the week: What makes me a ME?
This week the children have been thinking about how we are all similar but different. We recognised that we all have two arms and two legs but we are different sizes. We all have hair and eyes but they are different colours.
In P.E. we enjoyed running around the playground and flying our streamers in the wind. Finally, we dug up the carrots planted by last year's class. We washed them and took to show some of the children in school.
Book of the week: Hairy Mclary and Friends
During their first full week in the Nursery, the children have had lots of fun making new friends and exploring many of the activities we have available both inside and in the garden. They have been learning some of our daily songs and routines and had their first trip to the daily mile track where some of them were motivated to run round the track more than once.
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