Welcome to Joseph Locke Nursery!

This year our nursery class is called 'Above the Clouds.'

Our class theme is based on the traditional storybook 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' Throughout the year we will read this story often as well as many other traditional tales.

We have had an amazing learning journey in Nursery so far this year. We have covered some amazing topics including, 'Adventures' 'In the Night' and 'Eggs' to name a few. This term we get chance to find out all about life cycles and growing, as our topic is ‘Life’. We will be reading stories such as 'The Crunching Munching Caterpillar', 'Mad about Minibeasts', 'Jasper's Beanstalk' and 'The Teeny Weeny Tadpole'. We will have the opportunity to watch caterpillars grow and cocoon and we will watch them emerge into butterflies. We will also be visiting our school pond to look for frogspawn, tadpoles, froglets and frogs!

Throughout Foundation Stage, we consistently strive to promote our children’s oracy development. As Early Years practitioners, we understand that early language is a vital skill for later success ranging across all seven areas of the curriculum. Each week the children will be introduced to three new words through the programme, ‘Word Aware for the Early Years’. These words are specifically taught using actions, symbols and examples as well as throughout provision.

Our Nursery is a place to come and meet new friends, be imaginitive, sing and dance, and have a fabulous time whilst learning to love learning!

We aim to set the children up for the best possible start to school life and equip them with the skills that they need moving into FS2 and KS1.

Mrs West is the class teacher in Nursery. Miss Holdsworth is our Nursery Nurse and she works in the Nursery all day with all of the children.

Miss Royds and Miss Trevvi are our Nursery Teaching Assistants and they also works in Nursery all day. They also support our 30 hours children at lunch times.

Our morning session is 8.45-11.45 and the afternoon session is 12.30-3.30

We also have places for children to access 30 hours in our nursery setting. For more information please contact to the school admin team.

Most of our children have the 15 hour free child care and choose either a morning or an afternoon session, but we also offer 30 hour free child care places for eligable working parents, where children stay for both sessions and have their lunch in the nursery.

We believe in making our nursery as inclusive as is possible to all children; where the children can freely, explore, investigate, create and develop good relationships and foundations for the future! We have continuous indoor and outdoor provision, where children can choose activities from small world, construction, creative art areas, water play and role play to name a few. These areas are set up by the adults in the unit, but are often resourced according to the needs and interests of the children.

As well as these activities, the children will also work regularly with an adult, focusing on specific objectives from the EYFS curriculum. Continuous observations are made to monitor progress and ensure that our children have quality experiences that allow them to develop strong learning characteristics. Each child will be given a red book bag when starting nursery and we encourage adults to share stories with their children at home. You are invited in to school to choose a book from the nursery library with your child. We take part in the school wide reading miles reward system where children receive a stamp for each book they read with a chance to win prizes.