Nursery Curriculum NewsletterSpring 2025
For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
Song of Solomon 2:11-12
In RE this term, we are focusing on the visit of the Magi to baby Jesus and the importance of spreading His word to the rest of the world. We are focusing on the importance of sharing what we have with others like Jesus did. We will pay special attention to the prayer ‘The Glory Be’, listening to it and understanding its importance. We will also get ready for Lent and Easter celebrating that Jesus gave Himself for us and the example He is for us to love and care for others. We will explore the story of Easter and how it is celebrated in different places. We will be practicing the ‘Sign of the cross’.
ln the spring term, children will learn and apply names to different family relationships, and will discuss ‘special people’ who they can trust. We will explore the importance of family and ensure that the children know who they can go to for help, if something is troubling them. We will then explore what makes a good friend, using scenarios and role play to help the children to empathise and make good choices with their friends. They will begin to understand how their behavior affects other people and that there is appropriate and inappropriate way of behaving. They will learn to look to Jesus as a role model for being a good friend. Finally, our RSHE lessons will help the children to consider how to resolve conflict in friendships through saying sorry and asking for and receiving forgiveness. They will learn to recognise when they have been unkind to others and say sorry and that we should forgive like Jesus forgives.
Our focus texts this term will allow us to extend children’s vocabulary, helping them to learn unfamiliar words and concepts. As we investigate The Space and People who help us, we will be learning different words that apply to both topics. There will be many opportunities to develop the children's understanding of questions, as they discover how to give answers to certain questions. Introducing new concepts, we will motivate the children to ask questions and talk about their ideas. We will broaden their storytelling language by modelling more complex forms of language and elaborating on the children's ideas. The children have formed good relationships with each other and are happy to start conversations. We will be encouraging the children to explain things they know well to their peers, to build their confidence in communication and to help them to process key language.
We will use activities such as Story Dough to support the children learning and using new vocabulary.
As the children feel more comfortable in the environment, we will begin to allow them to practise their personal, social and emotional skills more independently and with less adult intervention. Some examples of opportunities we can provide to encourage this are: setting up group games which the children have played with adults before, but allowing the children to now lead the game; reminding children of the language they can use to resolve conflicts and standing back to observe them using it effectively; allowing the children to use sand timers independently, to organise turn taking with toys. We will expect the children to remember rules without needing an adult to remind them. We will also expect them to complete daily routines by themselves for example: putting away their lunch bags, bottles and coats; washing their hands; putting on wellies and aprons. Encouraging independence in these skills, which we know they are capable of, will boost their confidence, self-esteem and resilience.
TThis term, the children will learn about the importance of brushing their teeth. We will read 'Dave and the Tooth Fairy' by Verna Wilkins to support their learning. We are going to work on learning how to brush our teeth and setting up a good routine. We are also going to talk about all of the ways we can keep our mouths healthy. We will use music and dance to help the children to learn sequences and patterns of movements and moving in time with a rhythm. ln Write Dance sessions, the children will use large-muscle movements to wave flags and streamers, paint and make marks.
Our focus texts for Literacy this term are: ‘How to catch a star’, ‘Astro girl’ and ‘Whatever next’. We will also be exploring the traditional tale: ‘The three little pigs’. These stories will inspire creative storytelling and imaginative role play. As they learn about people who help us, we will use texts like: ‘When you are fast asleep’ and ‘Superhero’ to inspire them to retell similar stories as well as creating new role experiences. We will use the story ‘What the lady bird said’ to focus on farm environment and we will use the simple rhymes to support our phonics development too. As the adults scribe the children's role playing and oral storytelling, we will leave mark making tools available to encourage the children to start marking their own stories too.
This term, the children will practise using body percussion to develop their awareness of sounds and rhythms. They will learn to distinguish between sounds, remember patterns of sound and distinguish musical instruments from voice sounds. We will then move on to speech sounds as the children understand them to be distinct from other environmental sounds. We are also focusing on oral blending of familiar words. Rhyming and alliteration games will be key to develop phonological awareness.
Our focus this term is on the numbers 1-5. The children will practise subitising, as well as investigating the composition and representation of these numbers in a variety of practical ways and through many different contexts. The children will also learn to measure height and length and know the difference between them. They will have the opportunity to use measuring tapes and also come up with their own units of measurement. They will learn how to weight the mass of an object using scales and using the vocabulary required to compare the mass of two objects. Finally, they will learn how to measure capacity and begin to be able to predict which containers hold more or less.
The children will be exploring the season. We will take a look at what is different around us and compare to what it was like before. We will explore the space focusing in the moon and stars and the sun. ln our outdoor play, we will encourage the children to make observations about the sky and the weather and compare what we see in the day to what happens at night. Then, we will learn about different professions. The children will be able to talk about them and describe them. The learning of each of the professions will be approached in diverse ways such as role play and real life experiences. Professionals from different jobs will talk to us about their work and how they help other people. We will also focus on farms and explore all the different jobs that take place, the animals and what is like a day in a farm.
This term, the children will be learning about portraits drawn by Matisse and Picasso and then draw their own self portraits. ln their independent learning, the children will have lots of opportunities to try various process art activities inspired by our focus texts. For example, moon paintings with sand paint, stamping paint with cookie cutters, painting with sticks and marble painting.
