Exe Class (Pre-School) 2023/2024

Welcome to the new academic year!

Exe Class

Mrs Emily Way (Foundation Unit Lead) and Mrs Kelly Triggs (Nursery Lead)

Our Foundation Unit provides education and cares for children aged 3-5 years old. It is a fully integrated Pre-School (Nursery) and Reception unit staffed by specially trained Early Years practitioners and teachers. The children work through the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum without any major upheaval between the Nursery and Reception years.

We are very proud of our play-based curriculum designed to reflect the children’s interests and needs whilst developing positive attitudes toward learning

If you are interested in your child attending our Foundation Unit please visit the ladies in the office who will be happy to provide you with the relevant information and forms.

Pre-School (Nursery) Sessions

Morning sessions 9.00 am to 12.00 pm

All-day sessions 9.00 am to 3.00 pm

We will also offer the option of starting at 8.30 am.

This extra 30 minutes can be taken as funded or bought as an extra at a cost of £2.30

If you require more hours than they are entitled to, extra sessions can be paid for;

Morning sessions -3 hours-£13.80 (£4.60 an hour)

Full days – 6 hours- £27.60 (£4.60 an hour)

2023- 2024

Our Exe Class is a fun place to be!

The children have settled in well and already have had a very busy, exciting start!

When children play and enjoy what they do, they have the best potential to learn and develop. It is our first priority to create a happy, fun, safe learning environment for all of our children to flourish.

Tapestry

The children’s ‘Learning Journeys’ are recorded digitally via an app called ‘Tapestry’. This allows us to regularly upload observations and keep parents informed of what the children have been doing.

Parents can comment on these observations and even do observations of their child’s/children’s learning at home for us to see.

If you have not had the chance to share any of your home learning experiences with us yet, remember you can upload photos and messages via our Tapestry tool and the children are invited to share these with us in their own words during our ‘Tapestry Tuesday’ sessions. Please upload as much as you can, we love seeing what you have been up to and it will help us to keep your learning journey up to date with all of your adventures.

If you are having trouble accessing Tapestry please email wilcombe@ventrus.org.uk. The admin team will forward your email to one of the EYFS team who will be able to help.

2023- 2024

We are delighted to welcome back familiar faces and new faces this week to start our new academic year. We have had a fantastic first week back! The children have settled in well and have had lots of fun along the way.

Last Day of Term July 2023!

The children enjoyed a morning out. We walked along the canal to the park and then enjoyed ice cream from the Canal Tea Rooms before heading back to school.

I would like to say a big Thank You to all our children and families for all their support this year, it has been a very busy year! ????

I wish all the children good luck in Reception and look forward to continuing working with your children. To all, I wish you all a lovely summer!

Teignmouth Beach

Today Nursery and Reception children all enjoyed a day out at Teignmouth Beach to celebrate coming to the end of the academic year! First, we got the train down to Teignmouth, then had a short walk to the park where the children enjoyed the slide, climbing frame and water play area, we then went to the beach where they made sand castles and got to experience going into the sea for a paddle, we then got sausage and chips for lunch followed by ice cream with a flake for dessert, and finally had a short play on the green before heading back to the train station to catch the train home.

Open Day

Today we enjoyed welcoming some of our families and new families to see our New preschool grounds.

Easter

During the last week of term, the children enjoyed learning about Easter. We made Easter cakes, Craft chicks, Easter cards, counting and matching numerals easter eggs.

On the last day, the children took part in an Easter Bonnet parade, where their parents/family and the rest of the school got invited to watch the parade. The Bonnets were made at home with the children’s families and there was a prize for the winners 1st, 2nd, 3rd which was voted by all the classes in the school and the children’s families. The families got invited back to their child’s class where they had refreshments and interacted with their children. In the afternoon the children took part in the school’s yearly egg mobile competition, and Easter Egg hunt and then we had a Foundation Unit Easter Party.

Science

This half term the children have enjoyed taking part in Science Day with the rest of the school. The Teachers had an experiment for every year group to take part in. The children showed confidence and great listening skills while going around the school. The children really enjoyed making the catapults and taking part in the balloon racing especially when the balloons flew off the string into the air.

Experiments we took part in;

Foundation Unit – Magic Milk

Year 1 – Dancing Markers

Year 2 – Spoon Catapults

Year 3 – Balloon Race

Year 4 – Density Columns

Year 5 – Rocket Mice

Year 6 – Erupting Lava Slime

For Science week as a class we did an experiment a day – Making rainbows using skittles, making a raincloud and watching it rain – freeing the dinosaurs from their frozen eggs using different resources to melt the ice, making our own skeleton using individual body parts to explore how the connections work and then drawing our own skeleton picture and finally we matched animals to their habitats, matching animal faces and their footprints to see how they are connected.

Spring Term 1

This half term the children have been very busy! Our Topic this term has been all about Fairytales. The children have enjoyed reading The Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.

The children enjoyed watching the Cinderella pantomime that was performed in school, the wolf visiting and meeting the children, making cakes, planting seeds, bean tasting, re-enacting the stories, blowing down the houses that were made from different materials using a hairdryer and exploring lots of different activities that supported their learning.

Christmas

The children have had a great week this week with lots of different Christmas activities. They have had a visit from Father Christmas, made Christmas hats and lots of Christmas crafts, read lots of Christmas books, enjoyed a Christmas dinner with the rest of the school and took part in Christmas jumper day.

Nativity 2022

The children in pre-school and in Reception have been busy learning the Christian Christmas story and they performed ‘Nativity songs’ together to their family and friends.

2021-2022

World Book Day!

Thursday 3rd March 2022

Today we celebrated the 25th anniversary of World Book Day. All of the children and staff enjoyed wearing their pyjamas and slippers to school. We celebrated books and the magic of reading in class. Teachers even swapped classes to read to the children!

Sharing Stories with Year 3

This term we are enjoying sharing stories with year 3 on a weekly basis.
This is helping the children develop positive relationships with other adults and older children, which is developing their confidence by being in new situations and giving them new experiences.

The older children are sharing stories with the children, which is building their vocabulary, which is encountering more words, and learning how to recognize and pronounce them than they would by just being spoken to.

Children learn best through observations and positive modelling, so the children reading aloud lets them hear what language sounds like and lets the children appreciate rich language.

This also improves their listening skills.