Early Years (Nursery and Reception) 2025-26

Welcome to Early Years (Nursery and Reception), the class teacher is Mrs Marsden and the class are supported by Mrs Manners (Monday-Thursday) and Miss Forrest (Friday). Mrs Athey teaches RE and PE on a Thursday afternoon.
This page showcases all that we do in Early Years at Whittingham.
We had a super first week back at school, lots of investigating, making new friends, having our first PE lesson and singing and dancing and learning some new Pop UK songs!
We ended our week with a very special pop uk concert, it was fabulous! 
Our Toddly Play sessions have started each Wednesday morning with a welcome from 8.45-9.30 where refreshments are provided and then the session begins from 9.30. Some of our nursery children join with a member of staff and are thoroughly enjoying it.
We do forest school each week in Early Years and once a month we are joined by pre-schoolers for our 'Babes in the wood' session. In our first week we had great fun finding things we could use to do our Hapa Zome! Bug collecting and den building is also a firm favourite.
We have been learning how to paint and mix colours to paint our self portraits. The children took such care in looking in the mirrors to see the colour of their skin, hair and eyes and used the paintbrushes carefully to add detail.
Once a month we hold our 'Babes in The Wood' forest school session where pre schoolers and their parents can join us for a 'stay and play' session. In Septmeber we enjoyed the story of The Room On The Broom and we made potions and some of us made magic wands and broomsticks.
We have started our Read, Write, Inc journey and we are beginning to segment to spell words using our magnetic letters, find the letters to make the words to match the pictures and feed Fred as well as recognise the initial sounds in words. Some of us have been working hard on our letter formation by choosing to practise on whiteboards. 
In Maths we have been learning about patterns and beginning to learn to continue a pattern too. We have done this in lots of different ways.
One of our favourite things to do is making tunnels for the water to travel down. We work collaboratively to do this and have good fun too. 
We had a visit from a Community Police Officer - he talked to us about what the police do as well as car and seatbelt safety. We all checked to see if we needed belts, boosters or car seats and everyone in our class still needs a car seat.