Nursery

One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is our time; time spent together reading and sharing a good book. We encourage and support parents to read with their children on a daily basis, recognising that parents play an incredibly important role in your child’s reading development.

Your child will be given a book, along with a reading diary to take home every Monday. Reading books will be collected, and diaries checked, every Monday and a new reading book will be given again on a Friday. We use our online learning platform 'SeeSaw' the childrren's reading log.

The Nursery children will choose a book from our story collection at school, whereas the Reception children will choose a book from our reading scheme as well as a book of their choice.

In the beginning, we often send wordless books home with the children. A wordless book is a book that tells a story purely through the illustrations. Wordless picture books are valuable tools for literacy development as they engage children, regardless of reading level, in prediction, critical thinking, meaning making and storytelling. Guiding your child’s interaction with a wordless book can also develop a richer vocabulary and greater understanding of story structure.

How to Read a Wordless Picture Book With Your Child

At first it might feel a little strange to sit down to "read" a wordless book with your child but we encourage you to tap into your inner child to give it a go. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Begin by looking at the cover. What can you see? What clues to the story does the cover illustration show?
2. Read the title. Does the title give you any ideas for what the story might be about? Make predictions about the story based on the cover and title.
3. Take a picture walk. Look through the pages of the book with the sole purpose of enjoying the pictures. Talk about anything that captures your attention.
4. "Read" the story. You might go first, inviting your child to add to your story as they see fit. Don’t be afraid to tell your story with dramatic flair. Add sound effects and interesting voices that suit the characters of your tale.
5. Encourage your child to take a turn telling their own version of the story.

Reception take part in a weekly PE session every Monday. The children take part in a session led by EdStart Specialist Education. You can find further information on their website (see link on this page).

Children in nursery and reception are to come to school in their PE kits on their PE day. They remain in their kits all day.

PE Kit consists of:
White T-Shirt
Black Shorts
Black pumps or trainers
Black leggings or joggers (during the colder weather)
Plain coloured hoodie (during the colder weather)

At Moss Valley we recognise that whilst phonics is not the only route to reading and writing, it is without doubt a highly effective and systematic approach, that supports and challenges children of all backgrounds and abilities, as they acquire, rehearse and perfect the skills to be effective readers and writers.

From first steps in Nursery our children learn to discriminate between different environmental and musical sounds, before progressing to making sounds with their bodies and voices. These experiences are delivered through play, exploration, and exposure to a range of different media, as part of our continuous provision. This provision continues into Reception.

Later from Reception onwards children will take part in daily RWI (Read, Write Inc) lessons. It is an approach to teaching phonics in which individual letters or letter sounds are blended to form groups of letters or sounds, and those groups are then blended to form complete words.

There are two elements to reading that your child will develop: phonics and comprehension. All the teaching and activities around reading that the school puts in place will be aimed at supporting one of these elements.

In England, children are taught to read the words on the page using phonics. Phonics is an approach to reading that focuses on building words from sounds. A sound might be represented by a letter (such as ‘s’ or ‘m’) or a group of letters (like ‘ch’ or ‘igh’). In Reception, children will start by learning the letters and the sounds they make, and how to put them together to read simple words. For example, once they know the individual sounds for ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’ they can blend them together to form the word ‘sat’.

Good comprehension skills are vital in reading as they help children understand the meaning of the words, as well as supporting their vocabulary and knowledge of the world. It is likely that children will be able to understand books and stories that are much more complicated than the books they can read by themselves, so most comprehension teaching will focus on children listening to and experiencing books that are read to them, or with them, and then answering questions and discussing them.

The children in EYFS are provided with a daily snack for each half term. We ask for a contribution of £7 each half term.

This covers the cost of buying the snacks, water bottles, ingredients for making playdough as well as any baking activities that your child may participate in a half term. We try hard to keep costs reasonable and have perfected the skill of making our snack fund go far.