Specific Areas

Literacy

We surround ourselves with books, songs, and enjoying words.

We value the importance of repetition of familiar songs to build confidence in joining in whilst also introducing new ones to stretch the children’s interest and the learning of rhyme, rhythm and beat.

The nursery has a library of story sacks which can be borrowed for use at home .These also include activity sheets to support home learning.

We always join in with and promote world book day with staff dressing up and sharing the fun too. We have witnessed the excitement and motivation this brings to the children when a story is read to them by a character!

We always have books available to swap or borrow to link in with children’s particular interests or new experiences

Mathematics-carefully planned activities and resources supports the children’s development of mathematics from singing number songs to matching and sorting and completing puzzles.

Snack times are used as a wonderful opportunity for counting how many children, recognising the number and discussing size and shapes.

Water and sand play support investigations into weights, capacity and cause and effects with practitioners knowing just when to extend thinking and ideas.

Understanding The world-Providing our children with the opportunity to explore and find out about the world around us, using technology and discovering people, places the past and present is evident in all our rooms and championed within our displays and topic work.

Joining in with festivals and celebrations relevant to our families is exciting and lovely to see when children share their traditional costumes favourite foods and traditions is empowering for us all.

Promoting lifelong skills and fostering knowledge about how we can conserve the environment is paramount and to support this learning we have a large vegetable plot and planted areas where the children can be part of the planting and growing process first hand and begin to understand how we can be self-sustainable for the future.

Our nursery has twice won the Southport flower show garden in a wheel barrow competition and are current reigning champions.

A permanent under cover area provides a perfect place home role play and a mini world area our mud kitchen a place for sensory open ended exploration!

Expressive Arts and Design-

At Lucy Lockets all the rooms have an excellent range of construction materials with discovery resources to add and extend ideas. Children become confident to select pipes, gutters and tubes to create ramps and bridges using concepts of travel and movement and transportation.

Children are encouraged to use a variety of media to express themselves from paint, glue and collage to gloop, shaving foam and jelly!

All the rooms follow a programme of music and movement which allows the children to move freely to a variety of music and dance styles. Musical instruments are always available to explore sounds rhythm and beat.

Staff offer mini world play that supports current interests or themes allowing the children to try out new words that they have learnt through current topic work.

Big role play areas are well planned and resourced supporting themes, interests, and seasonal changes .They are reflective of all cohort cultures and lifestyles ensuring everyone feels at home and respected.