Nursery Spring Newsletter

 

            

Term: Spring 2025    

Dear parents and carers,

This half term we welcome some new children and families to our Nursery. We are looking forward to having them join our community. 

Our focus theme this half term is ‘Transport’. We will be sharing stories like ‘Rosie’s Walk’, ‘The hundred decker bus’ and ‘Train Ride’. We will be taking the children on a bus trip to Central Park this half term, we will share more information about this soon and will be asking for parent volunteers to support the trip. 

Our learning focus this year will include the areas of development according to the Early Years foundation stage guidance (EYFS):

Communication and Language 

Each week will be focusing on a key text which will allow the children to become familiar with the story and retell the story using their own words. Our younger children will be encouraged to join in with words and repeated phrases in the stories. Our older children will be encouraged to remember and re-tell longer stories, we will be including ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions in our story time sessions. 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development 

The children will be encouraged to share and take turns and welcome new children into our Nursery. We are starting to think and label different feelings using stories to help us. We will speak about being ‘angry’, ‘sad’ and ‘happy’ and talking about what we can do to help us with these feelings. We will relate this to the zones of regulation and support the children to check in using their pictures in the morning and afternoon. 

Physical Development 

We will continue to focus on gross motor and coordination activities to strengthen our shoulders and core muscles for whole body movements; this is a prerequisite to writing. You will have seen gross motor activities such as: hula hoops, climbing frame, basketball hoops, balancing on the logs and vertical painting. 

Our older children will be encouraged to hold a pencil using a tripod grip and will be supported to add detail to their pictures.  We will also be focusing on putting coats on independently and starting to manage zips ourselves. 

Phonological Awareness

We are focusing on understanding syllables this half term for our older children. We will share videos to support this on our weekly blog. 

For our younger children we will be focusing on clapping along to rhythms in songs and rhymes. 

Maths

We will be singing lots of finger rhymes this half term such as ‘1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive’. We will introduce our ten town programme and focus on 0,1,2 and 3. The children will be encouraged to count groups accurately and understand the last number they say is how many objects in a group. 

Understanding of the World 

We will be creating floor books in our key worker groups to share our families and special holidays we celebrate. This will support us to understand other cultures. We will also share stories to support this. 

Important information:

     

• Please ensure your child has a named set of spare clothes in nursery at all times. 

• All uniform, bottles and pack lunch boxes should be labelled with your child’s name. 

• Please can toys from home stay at home. We have lots in school and it saves toys being lost or broken. 

• The children only need to bring food to school if they are having a packed lunch. 

• Please label everything clearly with your child's name, coats, jumpers, lunch boxes and gloves and hats. 

We look forward to continuing to work with you over the upcoming year and thank you for your support. If you would like to contact a member of the nursery team via email the address is: nursery@broadford.havering.sch.uk 

        

Kind regards,

The Nursery Team

Reception Spring Newsletter

 

Dear Parents and Carers, Term: Spring 1          

Welcome back! We hope you all enjoyed the festive break and are looking forward to the spring term.

Please contact the school office if you need to pass on messages throughout the day, e.g. change of adult picking up. The school office will then let the class teacher know as we do not always get a chance to read messages on Dojo throughout the day. We have an open door policy and are happy to talk to parents/carers at the end of the day, once we have dismissed all of the children. Now that the children have been in school for a term, we kindly ask that adults say their goodbyes at the classroom door and encourage the children to enter the classroom independently. Thank you.

Reading 

Thank you for all of your support with the children’s reading at home so far. Please continue to ensure that your child brings their reading folder to school on their reading day. An adult will read with your child on this day and their books will be changed. Your child will be tested on their sounds and set words on this day. If they get all of their words correct they will move on to the next level of words. If you have misplaced your child’s current word sheet or set 1 sounds sheet please let your child’s class teacher know. Please note if you bring in your child’s folder on a day that is not their reading day, unfortunately we will not be able to read with them or change their books as we have other children assigned to read on that day. Please also continue to record any reading you do at home in your child’s reading record. The expectation is to read at least 5 times a week. 

School start times

Just a reminder the school gates open for an 8.30am start and then reopen for the end of the day at 3.10pm.

Hats, gloves and scarves

We have a number of hats, gloves and scarves that are going missing in school. Please ensure ALL items of clothing that are brought into school are labelled. It is important that children are responsible for their own items but in order to help them locate these, names must be included. We have asked all children to put their gloves, hats and scarves in their tray or in their coat pockets. Thank you for your support with this.

Bags

If you would like to bring in a change of clothes for your child please ensure this is in a clearly labelled carrier bag. This remains in school. Please could we ask that you do not send your child in with any other bag unless it is a packed lunch or it is their reading day. We have limited space for coat and bag storage and items become lost / damaged when there is a high volume of bags. 

Lunches

Please discuss the lunch options with your child each morning. Please ensure they know what lunch they are having. If you need information on the lunches, it is displayed in the window as well on the Havering school meals website. 

Phonics

The children have been reassessed and placed into phonics groups based on their current stage of learning in phonics. They will continue to learn their Set 1 sounds, moving onto ‘special friends’. This term is used to refer to 2 letters making one sound - sh, qu, ch, ng, th, nk. They will continue to learn to blend sounds into words moving from oral blending to reading words and then short sentences.

Please support your child by going through these sounds with them at home. We practise letter formation every day in Reception but your child will greatly benefit from 1:1 practice at home alongside this. If you are able to support your child in this way, please watch this short clip on letter formation so you teach the correct phrase alongside each sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O-levOoRV0

Literacy

Stories are a key part of our curriculum and high quality texts will be used throughout the day to foster the children’s love of reading. This half term we will be focusing on Traditional Tales. We begin with The Three Little Pigs, followed by The Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Please check out our weekly blog and Dojo to see what the children get up to. 

Maths

The children have spent the Autumn term building their understanding of numbers within 5 and learning lots of new maths vocabulary. In Spring, we now move on to the composition of numbers to 5, mass and capacity, building on our knowledge of numbers to 10 and length, height and time. Please see some further information around these topics below;

Spring 1
Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6
Alive in 5		Mass and Capacity	Growing 5,6,7,8		Length, Height and Time
Small Steps
Introducing 0 Subitising 1 more and 1 less		Exploring capacity Comparing Mass Making comparisons	Representing numbers to 10 Composition of numbers Making pairs - odd and even Doubles Combining two groups		Day and night Comparing length Comparing height

Communication and Language 

We will be focussing on engaging with stories and nonfiction texts, retelling stories using repetition of repeated phrases and explaining the story in our own words. We will also focus on asking questions to deepen understanding and articulating our ideas in well formed sentences.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development 

This half term we are focusing on keeping our bodies safe and identifying safe strangers. We will continue to work on The Zones of Regulation to support us in recognising and managing our emotions. Lastly we will cover healthy eating and building positive relationships.

Physical Development 

This term there will be a big focus on fine motor activities to strengthen our hand and finger muscles for writing. These are all of the ‘fiddly’ activities you will see around the classrooms, such as threading, using tweezers, cutting etc. We will still be working on our gross motor skills in the outdoor areas.

Key Dates

Monday 13th - Friday 17th January	Amazing Attendance and Perfect Punctuality week
Thursday 6th February	Safer Internet Day
Friday 14th February	Last Day of Spring 1

We look forward to working with you over the remainder of the year and encourage you to speak to your class teacher if you have any questions.  If you would like to message a member of the EYFS team you can do this via Dojo or via email: reception@broadford.havering.sch.uk

        

Kind regards

Mrs Marie, Miss Mullan, Miss Hurrell and Mrs Ellender