I am Miss Lankester and I am the Nursery teacher! Our nursery is a calm and happy place, where children can explore, play and develop a lifelong love of learning. I am so excited to be teaching your children and supporting their growth and development this year!

Mrs Borg-Heffernan and Mrs Luby will be supporting Nursery this year. Miss Manley will be teaching Nursery on a Monday morning.

What to bring to Nursery each day:

• A waterproof coat
• Spare clothing: underwear, socks/tights, t-shirt/jumper, trousers/leggings
• Named water bottle with water
• Weather appropriate clothing (cold weather - coat, gloves, hat; warm weather - sun hat, please apply sun cream at home)

To keep at Nursery:

• Wellies
• Puddle suit

**Please make sure all items of clothing are clearly labelled**

Autumn 1

Our Autumn 1 topic is Homes and Families. We will be learning through the following high-quality texts:

- Elmer

- Whatever Next

- Owl Babies

We will be talking all about where we live and who we live with. Please see the topic map below for more information about our learning! You can help support your child's learning at home by reading stories and using key vocabulary 

Phonics

We use the Monster Phonics scheme at Saint Mary's. In Nursery, we teach Phase One and Pre-Phase Two. Phase One activities are arranged under seven aspects:

1. Environmental sounds

2. Instrumental sounds

3. Body Percussion

4. Rhythm and Rhyme

5. Alliteration

6. Voice Sounds

7. Oral Blending and Segmenting

Phase One phonics activities support children to listen attentively, grow their vocabulary, speak confidently, discriminate phonemes, audibly reproduce the phonemes they hear, and use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes.

Below is a useful video for teaching pure sounds:

Monster Phonics Pure Speech Sounds (youtube.com)