Nursery

“Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places” – Roald Dahl

Welcome to Nursery!

Goldsmith Nursery accommodates up to 52 children at one time; 26 in the morning session and 26 in the afternoon session. In Nursery we base our learning around the seven areas that the EYFS framework sets out. These are Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development, Communication and Language, Literacy, Mathematics, Expressive Arts and Design and Understanding the World.

The children in Nursery learn mainly through play. There are parts of the session that are adult directed, where children will work in small groups with an adult, and other parts of the day where children will lead and initiate their own learning. Children will take part in learning experiences both indoor and outdoor. All of the children’s learning is recorded on the online learning journal Tapestry, which parents can access to keep up to date with their children’s individual experiences.

The Nursery Staff are Mrs Wilton, EYFS phase leader; Miss Waldron, class teacher and Miss Bev, play worker.

Meet the Nursery Staff!

Mrs Wilton is the Goldilocks and Nursery Early Years Foundation Stage phase leader. She has worked with the staff , children and parents across the EYFS department at Goldsmith Primary Academy for 22 years. Mrs Wilton enjoys spending time with her daughter, husband and ever-growing large family! She plays netball twice a week and enjoys travelling around the country during school holidays. Mrs Wilton enjoys all aspects of creativity from craft to incredible story-telling, dancing and performing; all of which she demonstrates at nursery on a daily basis, ensuring each and every day is fun, fun, fun!

Miss Waldron has been the nursery teacher at Goldsmith Primary Academy for two years. She specialised in Early Primary Education for her teaching degree and loves working in Early Years at Goldsmith! Miss Waldron enjoys spending time with her husband and two young daughters watching films, playing Xbox games and riding bikes. As a family they also enjoy holidays, camping and mountain walking. Miss Waldron has a passion for reading and loves to share this with the children in nursery through a wide range of exciting books. She also loves animals and enjoys looking after her own cats and rabbits in addition to caring for our nursery Guinea Pigs!

Nursery Book of the Week!

Each week we will share our Book of the Week. This will be a book that we have shared in nursery and that the children particularly enjoyed. Most of these books are available for a few pound from supermarkets or online or can be borrowed from your local library. The children would love to tell you all about the stories we share and would love to share them at home with you too!

Our first weeks in Nursery!

We have been exploring our new environment, making new friends and learning how to share and take turns. Look how busy we have been indoors and out!

Forest school fun!

We have had lots of fun on our first visit to the forest. We enjoyed exploring the woodland and finding all of the creatures hiding under the logs!

Baby Clinic

We learned so much about how we grow and change when we had our very own Baby Clinic in Nursery! We looked after the babies, fed them and made them better!

Stick Man

This week we loved sharing the Stick Man story. We made Stick Children to add to our Early Years Family Tree and we dug holes in the forest and filled them with water to see if Stick Man would sink or float!

Leaf Man

We read the story Leaf Man and welcomed Leaf Man into nursery. We all bought in bags of Autumn treasures to make Leaf Man feel at home. We had great fun exploring them and made our own Leaf People! On Wednesday, Leaf Man went missing! All that was left was a big trail of leaves in nursery. We made missing posters and searched the forest school for him. We found him in the log pile, phew! We made leaf crowns to celebrate finding Leaf Man safe and sound.

We met Leaf Man
We brought in Autumn Treasures
We talked about what we had found
We created our own Leaf Man
We made Leaf Man pictures
Oh no! Leaf Man was missing!
We made missing posters
We made missing posters
Leaf Man where are you?!
We searched for him in the forest
We found lots of different leaves
Is this Leaf Man?
We made leaf crowns
Leaf Man was hiding in the log pile
We found Leaf Man!

Halloween Party

We had a really exciting Halloween party this week! We dressed up in spooky costumes, played games, danced, made horrible potions and had lovely party food! It was such fun! We finished off party day with the funny, yucky story ‘What’s in the Witches Kitchen!’

We dressed up!
We made potions
We had fun!
Ewwww!
Fine motor play
Potion making
Spooky Storytelling

Storytelling Workshop

We invited our families in to nursery this week for a special storytelling workshop. Mrs Wilton read an exciting story to the children and family members. We then had lots of lovely activities linked to our favourite stories. Whilst we played we also chose our first library books of the year with Miss Waldron. We all had a brand new book bag to take them home in and exciting reading competitions to take part in! At the end, we had a great time acting out ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt!’ Such fun!

The Hungry Caterpillar
The Three Little Pigs
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
The Gruffalo
Leaf Man
Harry and his Bucketful of dinosaurs
Lost & Found
Pumpkin Soup
Elmer
Handa’s Surprise
Supertato
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Nursery Rhymes

Bonfire Night

We found out all about Bonfire Night this week. We talked about fires, sparklers, fireworks and how to keep our selves safe when enjoying these things. We went to the forest and Mr Anderson made a REAL bonfire! We sat around it, sang songs and ate hotdogs! It was so much fun!

Birthday celebrations!

We used the ingredients in the bakers shop.

We sang five current buns!
We counted the candles onto the play dough cakes.
WOW! a cake appeared inside the curiosity cube!
We looked at books to find out how to celebrate our birthday.
We had lots of books to look at to find out about the cake.
We followed instructions to make chocolate cakes.
We used a spoon to scoop out the mixture.
Mix it up!
Faster and faster!
Then we made sure it was full up.
Finally we added marshmallows on the top.
Ingredients appeared inside the curiosity cube!

Curiosity Christmas Cube!

It all started with a tiny sleigh and lots of snow!

Then giant snowflakes appeared because we think a little elf left the door open!

And then we found sweet wrappers but the sweets were gone!

Finally we came into nursery and this elf tree appeared! Who did this?

What great fun we had in the Elf Workshop! We wrapped presents, wrote tags and put them in Santa’s sleigh, we wrote and posted cards to our friends and family and we took Christmas List orders over the phone!

Look who appeared in nursery! A little Elf appeared trapped in a block of ice! We talked about how we could get him out. We suggested the sunshine might warm him up and that our heaters in school would melt the ice to water! The next morning all that was left was a pool of water on the plate … The elf had gone!

The next day we arrived in nursery to find our Christmas tree covered in pants and loo roll and the cheeky elf sat on top! There was a letter from Santa to say he had sent the elf…named Elfie…to help us to be good at Christmastime. We think Elfie needs lessons in how to be good!

Our Santa Trip

We had great fun on our trip to Hatton Christmas Adventure World with our friends. We met and fed the animals, we played in the soft play and we had a lovely time in Santa’s grotto. Santa checked whether we were on the Nice or Naughty List. He gave us a key to open his toy shop where we could choose any toy we wanted!