Welcome to Dunmore Primary School Nursery 2022-23

Hello Children, 

A very warm welcome from our Nursery Team here at Dunmore Primary. We are looking forward to meeting you on your first day with us in September.  We hope you are feeling as excited as we are. We have lots of fun activities ready for you when you start Nursery and lots of resources for you to explore. 

We are lucky to have a large Nursery room, a separate lunch room and two outdoor areas too. We have lots of different things to play with indoors and outside, for example, role play, construction, sand and water. We love to listen to stories at Dunmore and we tell different stories such as ‘What Ever Next’, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and ‘Owl Babies’ - these are a few of our favourites.

Don’t be worried about starting Nursery because you may already have friends here at Dunmore and even if you don’t, there are lots of other children waiting for you to be their friend.

We are so lucky to have you at Dunmore and you will have a fantastic time here with us too.

See you soon!

The NurseryTeam

Getting to know Dunmore Primary School

In our Video Resource Centre you will find a power-point about the systems we run at Dunmore to help you all settle in with us. (link below).

We've also made a booklet to share with your child. It has photographs of key members of staff and our school environment to prepare your child for starting Nursery. Use it like a story book if you want to. You will be brought a hard copy at your home visit but a pdf is available below in case you need another copy.

The Parent/Carer video is also available as PDF's below for you to download and print if you want to.

Phonics 

Our aim is for children to begin able to listen to and compare sounds. These skills can be improved by going on a listening walk and sharing the different things you hear e.g. birds, aeroplanes etc. We will upload different activities below to develop your child’s listening skills and ideas to compare sounds. During the year we will support children to be able to write their own name. If they can recognise (read) their name before they come to Nursery then that is a great start but this isn’t an expectation.  We’ll also help them to explore the sounds they can make with their bodies and voices. Each child is different and unique and therefore we understand there will be different starting points and we will support your child wherever appropriate with you as a team.

One aspect we will focus on at the start of the year is listening to the beginning sound in words. We sometimes call this the initial sound. We want children to be able to say what sound is at the beginning of a word. This doesn’t mean that they can recognise it or write it, but they can orally say the first sound.

We also focus on the sound at the end of a word. We do this by listening to and saying words that rhyme with each other.

If you feel your child is ready before September then please start breaking up the sounds in words to help your child be familiar with this. The documents below provide other games to support this area of phonics.

Handwriting 

If your child is enthusiastic and eager to write then please introduce them to our pencil control workbook. The PDF document below helps develop the fine motor control they’ll need to begin to form letters with us during the Nursery year.

Reading

Reading picture/story books to your child is a great way of encouraging them to be interested in reading themselves. We would encourage you to spend time doing this every day. Below is a sheet with some handy hints for reading to your child.

Fine Motor Skills

Below is a document we have produced to support your understanding of fine motor skills with some activities on to strengthen those very important muscles in our hands.

Dough Disco

Play dough is a great activity to strengthen your fine motor skills. Can you go to the Dough Disco? Develop your motor skills through this fun video!

Independence and Personal Hygiene 

Developing independence will benefit your child significantly to get them ready for Nursery. These skills include tidying away toys and taking care of your belongings etc. We would aim for children to go to the toilet independently and for children to be able to put on and take off shoes, wellies and coats themselves without help. Some of these skills will take time but please keep trying and practising them. Allowing time for your child to practise dressing themselves and giving your child ownership over taking the shoes on and off will help them to become quicker. We’ve added some inks that might help your child to understand how independent they are becoming and  to celebrate these milestones.