Gooderstone Church of England Primary Academy

Owls & Goslings

In Owls (reception) and Goslings (nursery), we strive to ensure that all children have high levels of well-being and enjoy their day through exciting experiences both inside and outside of the learning spaces. Through carefully designed environments and activities, we aim to nurture positive emotional well-being, togetherness and friendship where children can feel comfortable to snuggle down or explore with confidence. We believe children need to be able to explore freely, handling, manipulating, investigating and experiencing items and resources in order to fully understand their uses and their fragility. Much of our environment is adorned with authentic, real life objects to enhance curiosity. It is lit with softer, calm lighting and furnished with cushions and tactile materials. We use the children’s interests to plan enhancements to our curriculum with fun, enjoyable and engaging activities and dedicate time to listen to the children and give them a voice through our circle times, play and Philosophy for Children sessions. The children have time to explore and follow their own interests during the course of the day interspersed with adult-led activities which often include cooking, nature walks, singing, story time as well as phonics, maths, story times and singing.

Hygge

We follow the Hygge approach which is about cosiness and surrounding ourselves with the things that make life good like friendship, laughter and security, as well as more concrete things like warmth, light and good food. Hygge is a feeling and is believed to directly impact on happiness. Essential to our Hygge approach is a focus on appreciating and being grateful for nature and the world around us. It is about enjoying the simple things in life such as a walk on a sunny day, the smell of rain, the softness of a cosy blanket. We develop our curriculum to enhance this and an environment which aims to create a home-from-home for our children.

The Outdoors

We strongly believe that being outside offers the children opportunities to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant. The children are encouraged to have free access to all areas of the EYFS and to make their own decisions on where their learning takes place. We teach our children to respect and appreciate the natural world, spending much of our time outdoors, observing and taking care of our environment.

Muddy Moments

We use the outdoors for much of our learning experiences, enhancing children’s understanding though the use of natural materials outside. We might be mark making in the mud, doodling on leaves and pebbles or we may be noticing the natural environment to spot patterns, describe, compare and count of enhancing our understanding of the world by bug hunting, pouring, digging and spotting birds.

Woodland Wildlings

Each week, we head down to our little woodland for a morning to connect with nature. We might be climbing, hammering, weaving or cooking on the fire. It is a supportive and nurturing environment where children have the opportunity to follow their own interests, explore risk and challenge themselves.

Online Resources

We have a number of online resources that you can use at home to help your children.

Bug Club Reading
Information regarding your child’s Bug Club login details can be found inside their yellow reading diaries. Please visit www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/login

Purple Mash
https://www.purplemash.com
We use Purple Mash for teaching computing, but is also contains activities and games to do at home.  All children have their own individual log-in, which is printed inside their yellow reading diary if they cannot remember it.

Phonics Play
www.phonicsplay.co.uk
This site has some good games and activities in the “Free phonics play” section to help your child practise phonics and tricky words we have been learning in class.

Numbots
https://play.numbots.com
This is a fantastic resource to support your child’s maths at home. Your child’s log in can be found inside their yellow reading diary.