Nursery (Ladybirds)
Welcome to Nursery (Ladybirds)!
What are we learning in Nursery?
Children have settled in well and we have welcomed some new children and families to us at Worth Valley. The children are developing relationships well with staff members and their peers, and they are developing their confidence and self-esteem as they settle into the routines of the day. We will be learning about dinosaurs and autumn this half term, and we will be doing lots of singing, reading stories together, counting, learning to use the toilet with confidence, as well as developing listening skills as we share carpet times and small group times together. Please join in with singing the rhyme of the week at home and take a book home from the lending library to share together.
We made dinosaur swamps with different textures and dinosaur biscuits using flour, butter and sugar. We have been collecting and exploring autumn leaves that are falling from the trees and using conkers in our play. We have done lots of counting with them, and we have been rolling them down ramps and in paint. We even made conker soup.
Top tips to get ready for reading
1. Share nursery rhymes
One of the most valuable things you can do to get your child ready for reading at Nursery is to share traditional nursery rhymes together. There’s a wealth of nursery rhymes to choose from and they all offer a variety of pre-reading skills.
Nursery rhymes are fantastic because they:
- Familiarise children with the features of a story, e.g. character, setting, plot and structure (a beginning, middle and end).
- Explore rich and unusual vocabulary (e.g. ‘tuffet’ and ‘curds and whey’ in Little Miss Muffet).
- Create a strong foundation for early phonics through rhythm and rhyme.
- Can be a sociable activity and encourage early communication – adults and other children can join in the words and actions together.
- Spark a child’s imagination, showing that words and pictures can be fun.
2. Explore signs and logos
As children begin to explore the world around them, they start to make associations between signs and logos they see and the idea that they hold meaning. Your child’s teacher will be exploring environmental print like this at Nursery to encourage pre-reading skills.
Look for and talk about logos, labels and signs at home or out and about: on cereal packets, toy boxes, shops, posters, street signs and so on. You can even have fun cutting out logos and seeing how many your child begins to recognise or talk about, even though they can’t decode text yet, e.g. ‘Lego’ or ‘Weetabix’.
3. Play I Spy Sounds
Helping your child to get ready for reading at Nursery can be great fun! A game that everyone enjoys is ‘I Spy’. When children first start this game, they will need lots of extra support as they start to make connections between sounds and objects – a strong basis for learning to read later on. It’s useful to scaffold each game with a topic, such as ‘Animals on the Farm’, to give your child a context.
- First, hide some farm animal toys or pictures in a box or bag.
- Next, choose one and, without letting your child see it, say: ‘I spy with my little eye, I can hear with my little ear, something beginning with c – and it goes “Moo! Moo!” What is it?’
- Give your child lots of praise if they say the right answer and plenty of encouragement if they don’t. If they do struggle, you could choose two animal toys and ask what noises the animals make before asking the question again.
- One day, you won’t need to do the animal sound and your child will learn c is the initial letter sound in cow.
4. Understand first phonics
When you talk about letters with your child, such as when playing games like ‘I Spy’, try not to use the alphabet names, such as in the ABC Alphabet Song. At Nursery, your child will be encouraged to use the letter sounds introduced in phonics (e.g. /a/ for apple and /sh/ for sheep). This will give your child a great foundation for learning to read with phonics at school.
5. Talk together
Speaking and listening are critical in laying the foundations for early reading and writing. How we engage and communicate with our children in the first few years of life directly impacts their reading. Research shows that the more words a child knows at an early age, the more proficient they are at reading challenging texts later on.
Conversations in the home encourage thinking skills, concentration and patience. These are great building blocks in the learning-to-read process.
6. Share books together
Children who read for pleasure are more likely to succeed academically. Children will be sharing stories and books at Nursery on a daily basis. You can help your child get ready for reading at Nursery by encouraging an enjoyment of reading at home too. Aside from online and high street bookshops, libraries are a perfect way for children to experience the joy and independence of choosing their own books to read.
7. You are a reader
Why should a child choose to read if they don’t notice significant adults in their lives reading? Make sure your children see you reading and perhaps talk about why you’re reading (if it comes up naturally). And what is the point of reading if a child doesn’t understand why reading is important? Think about how you read in everyday life and how you can show your child that it is important: reading instruction manuals, reading the news, finding out information, making a cake, searching online, reading a novel for pleasure and so on.
8. Your child’s name
One of the first words your child will recognise and read is their name. Initially, at Nursery, your child is likely to have a peg with their name on it. This is often accompanied by a photo of their face or a familiar picture so they don’t worry when they can’t yet read the word. It won’t be long until your child begins to recognise the first capital letter and soon all the letters in their name.
9. Creative and imaginative play
Play is critical in early child development. In terms of getting ready for reading at Nursery, role play is one of the most important activities a child can do.
When children play at taking on the role of another person or character, they begin to re-enact real-life scenarios or elements of a story. You will notice that your child starts to mimic phrases that they have learnt with a variety of expressions. As your child role-plays in this way, they will learn the power of language. All these things are a fantastic foundation for learning to read.
Useful websites
Learning about the Easter story
