In the Mighty Oaks Room the children are beginning to extend their sentences and are developing their communication skills. We encourage these skills through the use of daily interactions in the room, discussions during circle time, ‘Now Press Play’ sessions, expressing feelings, storytelling and consistently modelling the use of vocabulary and good sentence structure. Activities and sessions are effectively planned to support our children’s enquiry skills. They are encouraged to ask questions using a variety of sentence starters such as how? why? who or what? Which also plays a role in understanding how to respond appropriately to these questions when asked by an adult or another child.

Our children are beginning to have a preference for which hand they use to hold mark making tools in these rooms and gain confidence in pencil control. We support the children to make the transition from a whole hand grasp to using two fingers and a thumb by developing their fine motor skills by giving them opportunities inside and outside. 

In our nursery we use Letters and Sounds Phonics to support children with their reading and writing. In the Mighty Oaks Room the children are introduced to Phase 1 which focuses on developing their listening skills and sound recognition. In the Evergreen Room once our children are secure in Phase 1 they will progress to Phase 2 which focuses on linking the sounds to the letters of the alphabet, hearing and saying some of the sounds in words and beginning to write them. 

This also supports children when finding their names during self-registration and when writing their own names during free flow. They are encouraged to segment and blend simple everyday words once they are confident in their phonetic knowledge. 

In order to support our children with problem-solving and early maths skills our pre-school rooms have ‘Maths Mix’ sessions twice a week. These sessions enable the children to learn maths through play and relate it to real-life situations. For example, going on a minibeast hunt, counting how many minibeasts there are in the garden, discussing their patterns or size. Maths Mix enables the children to be confident in number recognition and counting up to 10, recognising and identifying basic 2d and 3d shapes and becoming familiar with space and measure.

In our nursery we monitor our children’s development and measure their progress using a mixture of observations, tracking and practitioner knowledge. We use In The Moment Planning, Tapestry, Tracking and 27 Month Reviews to ensure that all of our children reach their full potential within their learning journeys. This also informs us of how our children learn, what their interests may be and in which areas they may need more support or to be challenged.