Early Years

• Our  Reception Teacher and Early Years Lead is Mrs Castledine
• Our Nursery Teacher is Mrs Tones
• Our Higher-Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA): Mrs Bousfield (Reception)
• Our Teaching Assistants: Miss Makepeace, and Mrs Bailes
• Our Apprentice Teaching Assistant: Miss Greaves

Early Years and Reception Information

Find out more about our Early Years Curriculum by clicking here. Information on our Reception Class by clicking here.

Applying for a place at St Andrew’s

Guidance on applying and the application form for September 2020 can be accessed here.

Early Years Foundation Stage Brochure

Our Early Years Vision

Welcome to St. Andrew’s Foundation Stage Unit. We are committed to providing learning, which is engaging, inspiring and most of all enjoyable. We encourage children to explore, investigate, express themselves and make friends. Our creative and stimulating learning environment enables children to achieve their full potential and become confident, competent and independent learners.

Please take a look at our recent Parent Questionnaire for our Foundation Stage Unit. Foundation Stage Parent Questionnaire responses March 2019

Let’s get creative

Our Early Years children have had lots of fun during our ‘Let’s get creative’ session today. Both Nursery and Reception, children enjoyed making tiger stripe paper, playing on the balance bikes, making and tasting rhubarb crumble and playing parachute games.

What a busy but exciting week we have had!

A Special delivery to Reception Class

Early Years have really enjoyed studying the book ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell. A week ago, all Reception children wrote letters to the zoo asking for a pet. On Friday, we received a parcel. The children were asked to predict what they thought might be inside the parcel, thinking about it’s size, shape and weight. We each went on to draw and write about what we thought the zoo had sent to us.

To our amazement, we had been sent a corn snake!

We all enjoyed observing the corn snake, asking lots of questions and looking at information books to find out the answers to the many questions that we had. What an exciting day!

Measuring Giraffes

Early Years really enjoyed reading the story ‘Giraffes can’t dance’ by Giles Andreae. We constructed our own giraffe and measured how tall they all were and compared their sizes.

Colour mixing in puddles

We had lots of fun mixing colours in the puddles in our outdoor classroom.

Being creative

Early Years are really enjoying learning all about Jungle animals. We have been inspired by an artist called Henri Rousseau.
Henri Rousseau only started painting seriously when he was in in his forties. He was a self-taught painter and, as a result, his work is often described as naive or child-like. Although some of Rousseau’s most well-known paintings are of jungle scenes, he never set foot in a jungle. Instead, he took his inspiration from the Jardin des Plantes (botanical gardens) in Paris and illustrations in books. Our children have used books, just like Henri Rousseau, to create their artwork.

Outings

Mother owl had gone missing! The children helped Sarah, Percy and Bill to find their mother by collecting feathers in Wharton Park. We then went on to make a lovely, homely nest for the family of owls to live in. What a fantastic opportunity this was!

Please watch a clip from our dance that we performed in assembly.

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