Introduction
Children are at the centre of everything we do. We celebrate children as individuals who have natural curiosity and thirst for new knowledge through exploration. Children learn best through practical experiences and structured play, and this is at the heart of our Early Years curriculum. At Southwold, our Early Years curriculum offer embraces children from two years through to five years.
Our highly experienced team plan together to deliver activities based around rich texts, exciting themes alongside engaging in children’s interest points and next steps. Our unit is friendly, dynamic, creative, and stimulating and focuses whole heartedly on the high-quality provision within the learning landscape both inside and out and the interactions made with children.
At Southwold we embrace the love of reading. This starts very much in Early Years encouraging children to use their imaginations to create their very own stories using familiar characters, objects, and fabrics. We use oral story telling in our unit, and this has provided our children with the confidence to listen, tell and go on to write their own stories with excitement, action, and wonder. Children have great fun in phonics using our scheme ‘Little Wandle letters and Sounds’. Nursery enjoy discovering sounds in the environment and listening to nursery rhymes before moving on to recognising sounds and starting to blend with them in Reception. The process of reading is a delight to be a part of and the most wonderful moment is when a child picks up a book and starts to tell a story, look closely at the pictures, and finally read their first words.
Exploring and investigating number is also an important part of the daily curriculum at Southwold. The children have continuous opportunities to engage with practical equipment to enable them to practise a skill, secure and question the new concept and then teacher led enhancements to enable deeper thinking.
In the Early Years it is important to celebrate your child’s achievements both at home and in school and use these to decide upon their next steps, therefore we are excited to introduce you to our home school learning journal called Tapestry. This is an online tool used to record your child’s learning and progress.
As a school we are extremely fortunate to have an inclusion team who work alongside children from across the year groups and support parents too. Our ‘Sensory Room’ and ‘Well Being Suite’ are used regularly by our Early Years children and enable further sensory adventures and opportunities to play alongside our experienced staff.
At Southwold, we can offer you:
- A caring, experienced Early Years team with consistently high expectations, modelling and building positive relationships.
- A support system based on choices when things go wrong.
- A values-based approach which promotes positivity, respect, honesty, determination but most importantly happiness.
- A rich, engaging curriculum focused on rich texts, exciting themes, interest points and next steps which also promotes curiosity, wonder, questioning and much more.
- Early years education for two-year-olds through to five-year-olds.
- Excellent transition through to Key Stage 1.
- Daily reflection time for all.
- Story, rhyme, and song times galore.
- Assemblies which model and celebrate values within our unit and wider school.
- Family Learning sessions for parents and children.
- Opportunities to work alongside your child in Maths and Phonics.
Please see our Early Years Handbook below, it has been written to give you an insight into the wonderful world of Early Years at Southwold and we very much look forward to welcoming you and your child to our school; come and join the fun!
Where will you find us?
The 2-year-old Nursery Class is located through the main entrance, turn right at the pencil fence gate. The children will need to wait outside in the garden until the door is opened at 9am. All children will be released at the end of the session at 12pm.
The 3- and 4-year-old Nursery Class is located through the main office entrance, turning left into the garden. The children will need to wait outside in the garden until the gate is opened at 9am. All children will be released at the end of the session from the same door at 12pm, unless they are staying all day until 3pm.
The Reception Classes can be accessed from the Reception gate entrance. Children will come in via the cloakroom door. The reception children will be in school from 8.45am until 3.15pm.
What Will Happen At Lunchtime?
The Nursery children eat in the school hall then have their playtime in their Nursery Garden. The Reception children eat in the school hall and then play outside in the school playground alongside the older children.
More about the Early Years...
In our secure and caring environment, the children work towards a set of Early Years statements, which set high but achievable expectations for the children to reach by the end of the Reception year.
Through a broad and balanced curriculum, your child will be offered a variety of activities and experiences. Activities are organised for small groups as well as opportunities for individual work. The children are encouraged to participate in planning and reviewing their work, managing their own time and equipment.
In Nursery we work in small groups, and this allows us to get to know the children and their families individually. Focusing on a small group of children means that we are better able to plan for their learning needs and build a special relationship with them.
PE
The Reception children will have a PE lesson once a week. Children will come into school weraing their PE kit on this day (black shorts/ joggers and a white t-shirt). A little reminder for Nursery and Reception children - you will need:
- Named PE kit (Reception)
- Book bag
- £1.00 weekly voluntary contribution (cooking, treats, craft activities)
- Water Bottle clearly named (Fresh water is always available in the unit)
- Spare clothes for your peg
- Waterproof coat/Mac and trousers
- Wellies boots to keep in school.
- A fruity snack in case you feel hungry. Children will also be entitled to government fruit and vegetables and milk scheme too.