Woodheys Primary School

Welcome to our Nursery Webpage!

We would like to tell you all about Nursery and the exciting things we do. We will update this webpage to keep you informed of the exciting things we do and to give you some tips on how you can support your child. Please use your child's Tapestry account too!

Mrs Howarth Nursery Teacher	Mrs Millward Teaching Assistant	Mrs Kimitris EYFS Leader

Organisation of our Nursery Class

Nursery offers 52 nursery places and these are provided through 15 hour (part time) and 30 hour (full time) places. Part time places are offered through 2.5 DAYS MON, TUES, WED MORNING, OR WED AFTERNOON ALL DAY THURSDAY AND FRIDAY.

Nursery have their own allocated classroom with a door leading towards our outdoor environment which is shared with Reception. 

If you would like to apply for a nursery place at our school, please follow this link!

Our Aims

At Woodhey’s our aim is to provide children with a wide range of stimulating, creative and challenging early learning experiences within a secure, caring and inclusive environment, both within the classroom and outdoors. Our school values of together we achieve more, challenging ourselves to grow and flourish, happy and passionate to learn and caring for and respecting others  are at the heart of what we do.

We provide children with opportunities to explore and enquire: developing their understanding of the world around them through 'real life' experiences, stimulating resources, and adult led and child-led activities.

We aim to offer every child a consistent and personalised learning experience to ensure that all children who attend our EYFS department make good progress from where their learning journey started and are not left behind. During carpet sessions and continuous provision, we focus upon each child's personal next steps to ensure they are given the best possible opportunities to excel within our environment and achieve their age-related expectation (Good Level of Development).

Please find more information in our EYFS Policy.

Please find more information in our EYFS Vision Statement.

Our Curriculum

Our early years setting follows the curriculum as outlined in the 'EYFS Statutory Framework' and the 'Development Matters' guidance material.

The EYFS framework includes 7 areas of learning and development that are equally important and inter-connected. However, 3 areas known as the prime areas are seen as particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building children’s capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.

The prime areas are:

• Communication and language
• Physical development
• Personal, social and emotional development

The prime areas are strengthened and applied through 4 specific areas:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the world
• Expressive arts and design

Start of Nursery/ Baseline

When children first start in Nursery, we offer them a transitional period where they can initially visit the environment with a parent/carer and then attend for short periods of time by themselves. We feel that this gives each child the best possible start to our school and enables the following:

• our teaching staff to build a strong relationship with each family;
• our teaching staff get to know each child, including their interests and needs;
• our teaching staff are able to meet each child's interests and needs;
• each child gets to know and can begin to build a strong and positive relationship with our teaching staff;
• each child becomes familiar and happy with their new school environment, its routines and expectations;
• each child will have met and made friends with some of the other children who will be in their class.

Each child will be given a key worker who will be able to help make them feel safe and cared for. Each key worker group will have snack together and talk about their interests and family news.

Once we are confident that each child has settled in positively, we will begin 'baselining' the children. This is a 6-week process that will enable us to work closely with each child and find out about their interests, needs and abilities. The children will think that we are just 'playing' with them and will not be aware of this process.

Once our 6-week baseline period has been completed, we will begin to focus further on specific areas of learning and give each parent a bespoke 'Next Step' sheet which will highlight their child's individual learning aims.

Parent- School Relationships

We strongly believe that positive parent-school relationships can influence a child's school experience and ensure they continue to flourish. We aim to keep parents up to date with their child's learning through a variety of ways. These include:

• Tapestry (Online Learning Journey that has at least 1 observations added each week)
• Personalised Next Steps that are released 4 times a year (Autumn, Spring and Summer Term)
• End of Year Report (Summer Term)
• Parents Evenings (Autumn and Spring Term)
• Parent Workshops (Autumn, Spring and Summer Term)
• Stay and Play Sessions (Welcome Sessions during our transition events, Stay and Play in Autumn, Spring and Summer Term)
• Weekly Parent Home Learning Guides
• Daily Contact at the start and end of the school day
• Tree-mendous Behaviour Leaves (Home Learning Link)
• Golden Certificates from our Celebration Assemblies 

Parental Support

Nursery Admissions Booklet

We have created a Nursery admission book to help prepare our parents/carers for their child's start of school journey. Please find the link below:

Nursery Admissions Booklet

Tapestry and Systems Workshop (Autumn Term)

For those parents who would like to recap on our parent workshop or who were unable to attend, please find a copy of our parent workshop Powerpoint below. Click on the links below to open up the PowerPoint and the Booklet.

Tapestry Parent Workshop PPT

Tapestry Parent Guide

Phonic and Reading Workshops (Autumn Term)

Please find our phonic and reading workshops below:

Video 1 - Early Reading (Phase 1) Workshop 

Early Writing Workshop (Spring Term)

Please find our phonic and reading workshop below:

Main Workshop Video - Early Writing Workshop

Video 1 - How to write a CVC word

Video 2 -How to write a longer word with more than one syllable

Video 3 - How to write a simple sentence

Little Wandle Sound Mat: Phase 2 and 3 Sound Mats

Maths Workshop (Spring Term)

Please find our maths workshop below:

Maths Workshop Link - Maths in EYFS Workshop

Number Formation Rhymes - Number Formation Rhyme Cards

• Parent Questionnaire

  Thank you to all the parents who completed our EYFS 2024 Questionnaire. Our EYFS lead has analysed and read all parent questionnaires to ensure we are mindful of all parental/ carers opinions. These do mean a lot to us as we always aspire to be the best we can be. We are extremely proud to confirm that 100% of EYFS parents/carers would recommend our school. As these questionnaires were anonymous, we have created a document to summarise our findings. This can be found by clicking the links below:

  • Summary of all the results

Stay and Play Sessions

Please remember to check our ParentMail messages to see when our next Parent Stay and Play session is scheduled for.

Our News

Please log in to your Tapestry account to view your child's personal learning experience at our school. It is a good system to support home discussions about school days. Your Tapestry login email has been sent to you. If you are unable to access your child's account, then please let our EYFS team know and we will be happy to help.

Who Can Help?

At Woodheys, we value our families and know that sometimes our parents/ carers may need some extra support to guide them with aspects they are unsure about. You may be worried about your child’s development or wellbeing. You may need help with your own wellbeing. Please see our attached leaflet, where we have listed some key agencies and charities that you may want to make contact with.

Please also remember that we care and that we are here to help too!