Croeso i Feithrin!

Welcome to Nursery!

Welcome to our Nursery at Pontnewydd Primary School. We have lots of lovely lessons planned to welcome the children into Nursery and we hope your child will enjoy coming to Nursery every day. 

Our P.E Well-being day is a Friday. Please, could you send in children wearing suitable sports clothes and shoes each Friday.  Sometimes our sessions will be outside so a hoodie/jumper would also be beneficial once the weather gets colder.

We do spend a great deal of time outside in Nursery; either in our outdoor area or exploring our school grounds.  Please ensure that children have a coat with a hood when the weather is cold/wet, a hat/sun cream when the weather is hot/sunny, and wellies may also be valuable if the ground is wet or muddy. Please label all items sent in. Also, it would be great if you could provide a change of clothes in a bag on your child’s peg in case of little ‘accidents’, even if your child is usually dry, sometimes they still need changing after an over-enthusiastic session at the water tray!

During the first half term (alongside our teaching) we aim to settle, nuture, develop basic skills and further develop children’s well-being through a range of activities. We will be assessing children using the Foundation Phase Profiles from the Welsh Assembly Government. This is done nationally across all Nurseries and Receptions to give us an idea of where each child is starting from. This is nothing to worry about and will be done through observations of your child’s play and tasks. The results will help us to know where we can best help your child with their learning and will be shared with you in our first parents’ evening in October.

Our topic this term is ‘Right Here Right Now’. Below is the outline of what your children will learn in all the areas of learning. 

“ Together we will embark on building a curriculum that embraces four key purposes, supporting children and young people. “

The children will learn about these through our four characters. The children will be taught to be like:

• Ambitious Aled someone who is a capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives;
• Enterprising Elen, someone who is a creative contributor, ready to play a full part in life and work;
• Ethical Eleri, someone who is an informed citizen of Wales and the world; and
• Healthy Harri, someone who is a confident individual, ready to lead fulfilling lives as a valued member of society.

Six Areas of Learning and Experience:

• Languages, Literacy and Communication
• Mathematics and Numeracy
• Expressive Arts
• Humanities
• Health and Well-being
• Science and Technology

Below is an outline of what we will be covering in each of the areas from now until Christmas.

Language, Literacy and Communication
During these sessions, we will be encouraging children to develop their language skills further e.g listening, speaking and mark making. Lots of practical, relevant, purposeful and fun activities. We will also be following the ‘Read, Write Inc.’ programme where we will be learning sounds and blends.  After October half term, we will be focussing on one sound a week, which will be on the Nursery website page should you wish to practice at home.  We will also be practising/learning to take control with marks made, making purposeful marks and speaking about our marks made. We will learn to follow simple patterns including our names. Every other Monday we will be talking about our ‘news’ – during this lesson, we will be ‘writing/mark making’ about something that we did over the weekend.  To begin with, we will be mark making but as we learn letters, we will be trying to use them in our work.  We will also share lots of stories and nursery rhymes.

Welsh
In our Welsh work this term we will be learning basic commands and greetings. We will also learn how to answer the register in Welsh using the term ‘yma’ (‘here’). We will be finding out how to ask and answer simple questions such as ‘Pwy wyt ti?’ (‘who are you?’) and ‘Sut wyt ti?’ (‘how are you?’) as well as learning some Welsh songs and looking at Welsh storybooks to support our learning.

Mathematical Development and Numeracy
In this area, we will be practising our counting this term. I would like children to count by rote, touch count and take part singing numbers songs and rhymes. We will be beginning to learn some basic numbers and practise making the number shapes. We will also be looking at patterns and how we can re-create them. Finally, we will be looking at data handling and will collaboratively make a graph.

Expressive Arts
At Nursery, we are very creative, and we will be exploring a variety of media in different ways.  There will be lots of opportunities for the children to make their own creations, as well as more guided activities showing them how to use the equipment more effectively.  We have a variety of creative resources that are always available for pupils to access.  We will also be learning lots of nursery rhymes, number rhymes and Harvest/Christmas songs throughout the term and exploring some musical instruments and clapping rhythms.

Humanities

This area forms the main part of our topic. The children will be able to learn more about themselves and the lovely area we live in, the school and local community they play a part of. We will also start to learn about other important areas in our planet, such as our pets, farm animals, the weather and different climates. We will be looking at where we live on a map. Also, we will take a tour of our school making observations and talking about what we see. In Religious Education, we will be listening to the story of Noah’s Ark.  

We will also be celebrating Harvest (both Christian and the Jewish Sukkot), Bonfire Night and of course Christmas; finding out why we celebrate each of these and the traditions from this country.

Health and Well-being
A huge emphasis will be to settle and nuture the children. To begin the term we will be going over basic skills, modelling and encouraging children to take part. We will also be concentrating on encouraging sharing and mixing with other pupils (sharing, turn-taking etc.) as well as making new friends. In relation to our topic, we will be talking about ways of being healthy. In our Health and Well Being sessions, we will be taking part in yoga, mindfulness and PESS activities.

We have our P.E. sessions on a Friday where we will focus our physical skills but there will be lots of opportunities throughout the week to improve our skills.  This term we will be concentrating on using a variety of different equipment to develop our skills as well as using our bodies to travel in different ways and create different shapes.

As part of our FAB11 activities children will also get to take part in a range of activities designed to give them fantastic and fun learning experiences e.g a nature walk, make out of mud, roll down a hill to name but a few.

Science and Technology

In this area, we will be learning about different ourselves and animals on our planet. We will look at where and how they live. We will link with our homeland of Wales and our local area. We will encourage children to make ‘bug hotels’ to invite our local wildlife in. We plan to encourage children to use the I-pads and computer to create images/take photos and add their names to a piece of digital work. The children will be encouraged to later design and make a sleigh for Santa in the lead up to Christmas.  

We have lots planned for this term and we will have lots of fun too! We are eager for it to be a very happy start for the children. Each child will be allocated a Hwb e-mail address which we will give to you shortly. In the event of another Lockdown we will be setting work for you and your children to access on this Hwb site. Please feel free to explore the site and become familiar with it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask myself or a member of the Nursery staff. You can follow the school Twitter page @PontnewyddSch or join the school’s Facebook group - ‘Pontnewydd Primary and Nursery School - Official Group’.

Miss Millinship (Nursery Teacher), Mrs Hosking (Nursery L.S.A.), Miss Shone (Nursery L.S.A.) and Mrs Travis (Nursery L.S.A.)