Hello, I'm Miss Eastwood. I teach our Nursery class and I am also the Early Years Team Leader.

I am a qualified teacher with experience in Key Stage 1 and Early Years. I am passionate about learning through play and love creating an inspiring environment that children love to explore. You can often find me recycling and upcycling to create interesting ‘treasures’ for our classroom.    

When I am not at school, I am a busy mum of two who enjoys family days out, beach combing, or walking through our spectacular local woods. I am particularly excited to notice seasonal changes with your children and explore why this might happen through stories and play, ultimately allowing the children to follow their interests. 

A day in Ducklings might include:

              

Bucket time: Stage 1 engages children's attention with a high-energy and exciting activity, whereby the teacher pulls objects from a bucket. Stage 2 elongates children's attention to a different adult-led activity. Stage 3 develops turn-taking skills and re-engages them by allowing some children to participate in an enjoyable activity. 

Sensology: Learning through all our senses; children will taste, smell, hear, see and touch their learning. For example, in week 1, term 1, we are learning about colours, which is all about red. We taste strawberries, smell a red flower, hear red beads dropped on a drum, and see a red lava lamp. 

Dough Disco: Building our finger muscles to music using play-dough. This is an upbeat session where children enjoy developing their fine motor skills. 

Calm Time: Usually, after lunch, children lie down, listen to quiet music, and watch real bubbles float all around them. We discuss how to relax each part of their body and listen carefully to different parts of the music. 

Music: Nursery rhyme time! We are learning traditional songs and actions. We will enjoy a variety of genres, live and recorded music, and explore a variety of instruments, learning to maintain a beat. 

Discovery Time: A time for children to direct their learning, enabling them to enact and cement their newly learnt knowledge, develop social skills, acquire new knowledge from others and develop their creativity and confidence. 

Story Time: This might be a well-known book with practised actions, a story bag with objects to enhance the storytelling or a book selected by the children. 

Squiggle Whilst you Wiggle: It's as good as it sounds! We develop our fine motor skills by incorporating dance, music and large movements to help children develop the fine motor control they need for writing.  They will learn a new gross motor movement to a piece of music while holding 'flappers' (bits of fabric). The children then transfer these movements to floor level and swap their flippers for writing tools (crayons/pens, etc) to make marks. This could be in foam, on paper, in sand, etc. 

Maths: We explore colours, numbers, patterns, and shapes, using songs and everyday objects to bring the concepts to life! Along with the rest of the school, we follow the 'Master the Curriculum,' which allows for a consistent approach. 

Phonics: Beginning the year with Phase 1, including distinguishing between everyday sounds, then continuing with Phase 2 in terms 5 and 6, including recognising the graphemes and producing the phonemes. 

Supervised Toothbrushing: Following advice from Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, funded by Kent County Council, we participate in supervised toothbrushing. 

Forest School: Using our school field, it's a time for children to develop newly acquired skills and knowledge learnt in the classroom in a 'new' environment. It supports play, exploration and risk-taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner-inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.

Important dates:

Monday 8th September - The Nursery is open. Children are to arrive on their assigned days.

Group 1 -

Monday - 8:30 - 15:00

Tuesday - 8:30 - 15:00

Wednesday - 8:30 - 11.30

 

Group 2 -

Wednesday - 12:00 - 15:00

Thursday - 8:30 - 15:00

Friday - 8:30 - 15:00

 

Things to remember for your child to have at nursery every day:

Baby wipes

Nappies

Nappy rash cream

A shoebox with special items (that can be kept at the nursery)

Change of clothing

Coat

Lunch box (if not paying for school lunch)

Water bottle 

Note: Please label all the children's belongings clearly with their name.