St. Ives Primary
& Nursery School
A National Teaching School
Sandy Lane
St. Ives
Ringwood
BH24 2LE
Telephone: 01425 475478
Our Curriculum
At St Ives Nursery, we believe that children learn and develop best through play, and this is at the heart of everything we do. We understand that play fosters curiosity, creativity, and a deep love of learning, helping children build the essential skills they need for life.The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)The EYFS framework provides the foundation for our activities, guiding children’s learning and development from birth to five years. The framework focuses on seven key areas of learning:
1.Communication and Language (CL)
2.Physical Development (PD)
3.Personal, Social, and Emotional Development (PSED)
4.Literacy (L)
5.Mathematics (M)
6.Understanding the World (UW)
7.Expressive Arts and Design (EAD)
Our nursery curriculum has been carefully planned with the subject leaders in the school to ensure children get the opportunities to gain knowledge, develop skills and deepen understanding in preparation for school. We offer a wealth of learning opportunities and experiences as well as balancing it with following children’s individual interests and lines of enquiry. We aim for children to be highly engaged in our setting as we believe high levels of engagement leads to high levels of discovery and learning. Each half term, we explore a new question to spark imagination, investigation and discussion:
Autumn 1: Why Do Leaves Go Crispy?
Autumn 2: Can I Have Chocolate for Breakfast?Spring 1: How Many Colours in a Rainbow?
Spring 2: Are Eggs Alive?
Summer 1: Dangerous Dinosaurs
Summer 2: How Many Pebbles on a Beach?
These themes encourage children to ask questions, explore the world around them and develop a love of learning.Alongside our themes, we have daily early reading/ phonic and maths adult led inputs for our pre-school aged children. We follow the Read, Write, Inc. Nursery scheme for early reading and White Rose for maths inline with the rest of the school. For our younger children they have daily family time sessions focussing on developing communication and language skills through stories, music and movements and early mathematic skills through songs, rhymes and play. At our nursery, we understand that a child's emotional and mental well-being is just as important as their academic development. That’s why, alongside our rich learning environment, we follow the myhappymind program, which is specifically designed to support children's mental health and emotional regulation from an early age. This is a whole school programme which starts in nursery and continues through to Year Six.
