Nursery Class Teacher - Mrs Evans

Learning Support Officers -  Learning Support Officers -  Mrs Sara Baldwin, Mrs Hannah Harbison Evans, Mr Daniel Murdoch, Mrs Sian Morris,  Mrs Penny Bill

Mrs Rebecca Woszczycki and Mrs Maxine Pooley.

• January - Determination and Perseverance

• February - Honesty and Trust 

• March - Learning and Effort

This term children will begin to learn their sounds, we will also begin to practice letter formation and writing our names, working hard to perfect our pencil grips.

 More information about the phonics programme that we use in school can be found at www.ruthmiskin.com/parents. 

Throughout the day, the children are encouraged to use incidental Welsh such as 'diolch', 'bore da' and 'hwyl fawr'. During our Helpwr Heddiw sessions, we have been learning colours, songs, counting and basic commands such as sit down, stand up, listen and ready.

Mathematics and Numeracy form part of our daily routine.  The children are exposed to numbers throughout the day through counting, rhymes and focused activities, and we enjoy practising counting forward and backwards. Nursery children work hard to build a solid foundation with numbers 1 to 10 and beyond. All children have the opportunity to talk about maths through numbers, and we would encourage parents to speak about numbers in children's everyday activities. 

This term, we will continue to use 'numicon'  to help us with our counting and sequencing.  We will be using butterflies to introduce symmetry. We will investigate length, capacity, mass, sinking and floating.  We also sequence longest to shortest, largest to smallest and begin to understand the concepts of one more or one less.  

The children will be encouraged to make marks to form numbers.

Health and Well-being are critical for Nursery children, as this is a foundational period for their physical, emotional, social and cognitive development.  We will continue to provide daily opportunities for the children to develop their gross and fine motor skills. 

We will use our outdoor environment to enhance physical health and an appreciation of nature. We will encourage curiosity through exploratory play and hands-on activities and provide opportunities for creative expression through art, music, and imaginative play.

Children will be encouraged to express their feelings, begin to learn how to manage their emotions through activities such as storytelling or role-play and build resilience through problem-solving activities.

We will learn about the importance of healthy eating and washing hands. 

We believe that enrichment is about more than just extra activities; it’s about providing "awe and wonder" moments that ignite a lifelong love of learning. 

By introducing diverse experiences—from exploring the mud kitchen and rhythmic music sessions to hands-on "mini-beast" hunts—we help our children build confidence and make sense of the world around them. 

These opportunities allow every child to discover new interests, practice social collaboration, and develop the critical thinking skills that form the foundation of their future education.

Our unit title for this term is ‘Our Wonderful World’. During our other areas of learning experiences, we will begin to learn about living and non-living things.  Children will go on a walk around the school to explore what is living and what is non-living. The children will gain an awareness of groups of living things, for example, plants, insects and trees.  We will plant seeds and watch them grow.  The children will have the opportunity to explore habitats and think about our environment and how we can care for it.  

Children will look at images of themselves as babies and toddlers and observe and discuss how they have changed. Children will then match animals to their infants and notice how they change and grow.  Children will begin to explore non-living things and how forces work to create push, pull, floating and sinking. 

We will also explore how forces work through hands-on experiments.  We will investigate push and pull, floating and sinking.

We will learn songs, paint pictures, create junk models and predict if they sink or float.

We look forward to celebrating St David's Day and completing lots of fun activities during Welsh Week.  The children will be able to wear House Colours or Welsh Costumes to join in the celebrations. on March 2nd. 

Please ensure that all of your child's personal effects are labelled; this includes water bottles, fruit pots, jumpers and coats.

Please ensure that water bottles contain water, not squash or fruit juice.   During the afternoon session, we have our fruit snacks; please could we ask that only fruit or vegetables be provided?  Grapes should be cut and not kept whole.

If you are not personally collecting your child at the end of the school day, please inform the Nursery staff who will collect them. 

We have several children in school with a nut allergy.  We strive to be a nut-free school, so please do not send in nut products in packed lunches such as nutella.

Could the children please wear PE kits to school every Thursday.

Many thanks

The Nursery Team.

Don't forget to download our School App via the Play or App stores - The School App will provide you with up to date information about activities and events at Oldcastle Primary School.  Please look out for our weekly newsletter issued via The School App and available on our website on a Friday afternoon.  The newsletter contains all forthcoming diary dates for the school.