Hedgehogs Nursery
Hello and welcome to Hedgehogs Nursery! We are part of the Early Years Foundation Stage class at Clifton Primary School. Our Teachers and Teaching Assistants work as a close team with the children, helping and supporting learning and development across all areas of the Early Years curriculum.
We love our ‘Hedgehogs’ classroom and learning environment: we have lots of areas to play, explore and learn, from construction, sand, water, to our role play, come and make, paint and playdough, and of course our wonderful outdoor classroom and ‘Secret Garden’ – we always have lots of busy fun with our friends and teachers.
We also learn lots of new information and practise our skills using our large interactive screen. We love exploring, investigating, building and counting; we also love to write and draw so you will find mark-making resources such as whiteboards, clipboards and a variety of paper and books all over the classroom as well as outside in our writing shed, our blackboard areas and more! We love reading too. You can always find us snuggled up with a good book in our reading loft or reading books outside linked to our learning. What’s YOUR favourite story?
We love going outside each day to play and take part in a range of activities in our outdoor classroom, sheltered area, our Secret Garden and our large, varied playground. The children in the Foundation Stage are outside whatever the weather, so wellies and waterproofs are an essential part of our uniform.
During sessions, we have ‘free-flow’ activity times where we can choose which areas we would like to play and explore in with our friends. We also enjoy taking part in games and activities with our teachers and love to practise our phonics and number skills daily. We sing and share stories each day. We have special circle times and like to share celebrations such as birthdays too.
The adults in ‘Hedgehogs’ spend lots of time watching, listening, talking to and playing alongside us. They know this is key to helping us develop our communication and language skills and also helps them to move us forward in our learning in a fun, practical way. Watching and listening to us carefully means our teachers can plan activities and provide resources that excite and engage us.
We enjoy having a daily snack, where we have fruit, vegetables and other healthy treats and milk or water each day.
We are fantastic at so many things: we enjoy celebrating individual achievements and progress and displaying our achievements on our ‘WOW!’ wall. These achievements can be linked to our topic activities or for other magic moments, from ‘tidying up’, ‘washing our hands carefully’, to ‘knowing the names of lots of dinosaurs’ or ‘spotting the letter S’… the list is endless, depending on what the new skill is we have tried hard to master.
Each member of the Early Years has a special ‘Learning Journey’ on Tapestry filled with photographs, annotations and examples of all the fantastic things we do! This allows us to share our learning with our parents and carers and is fun for us to look at with our teachers, friends or just quietly on our own. We love to tell our teachers and friends about our achievements at home too.
The Foundation Stage provides the building blocks for our future learning. Our teachers know that we learn best through ‘hands on’ play experiences. By following and developing our interests, they hope to nurture a love for learning which will stay with us throughout our time at school and beyond.
Nursery Sessions
We offer up to 30 hours of childcare each week. Our 30-hour offer is made up of:
Morning sessions: 9am – 12pm (doors open at 8.45am)
Afternoon sessions: 12.30pm – 3.30pm (packed lunch needed or school lunch available)
Full Day sessions: 9-3:30 (wrap around care from 8am - 5:50pm is also available)
We can be flexible within the day and can try to accommodate different timings to suit individual circumstances.
If your child has access to 15 hours of childcare per week, but you would like them to attend additional Nursery sessions, they are at a cost of £4 per hour.