Garlinge Primary School and Nursery, Westfield Road, Margate, Kent, CT9 5PA
In Nursery and Reception we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. It identifies 7 areas for learning; three prime and four specific areas:
Foundation Stage plan from the children's interests to help the individual child want to be keen to learn. We do have starting points for each term. These are Ourselves, Our Past, Traditional Tales, Animals and Literature through Theatre but we can, and often do, move away from these depending on the direction the children take us in.
The adults in Foundation Stage continually assess the children throughout the year. These take the form of long observations, short observations, photographic evidence and tasks the children may complete. From the assessments we ensure that the planning is being completed at a level that is appropriate to the individual child's stage of learning.
Parents are a fundamental part of the children's development. We send home scrapbooks to allow the parents to share experiences with us. The children can record visits or activities they have completed at home and then the children can share these experiences with the rest of the children in the class. We invite the parents to come and play alongside their children. We share the children's learning journey with the parents regularly through My Unique Story.
We teach daily synthetic phonics sessions looking at a different sound every day. We then apply this knowledge to word building and blending the sounds together to read and write words.
We begin to explore the basic skills required to develop mathematical skills throughout the children's education. We have daily maths sessions where we explore counting and applying number knowledge to mathematical problems. We also look at shapes and relate them to our surroundings looking at their properties.
We invite many people to Foundation stage to come and share their experiences and to make the children's learning real. We have had an ambulance, fire engine, nurse and dentist to visit the children and discuss their role. We also plan Educational Visits to enhance and support the children's learning.
We offer 15 hour am and pm places (funded) and 30 hour places, each session has a maximum of 26 children in it. We also offer the option to purchase additional sessions and lunchtime supervision on a termly basis.
Supervised Lunch Club (lunch not provided) 11:45am – 12:30pm £3.00 per day.
| Day | 11.45 - 12.30 |
| Monday | 11.45 - 12.30 |
| Tuesday | 11.45 - 12.30 |
| Wednesday | 11.45 - 12.30 |
| Thursday | 11.45 - 12.30 |
| Friday | 11.45 - 12.30 |
Additional sessions (non-funded)
| Day | Session 1 (am) | Cost | Session 2 PM | Cost |
| Monday | 8.45 - 11.45 | £15.00 | 12.30 - 3.30 | £15.00 |
| Tuesday | 8.45 - 11.45 | £15.00 | 12.30 - 3.30 | £15.00 |
| Wednesday | 8.45 - 11.45 | £15.00 | 12.30 - 3.30 | £15.00 |
| Thursday | 8.45 - 11.45 | £15.00 | 12.30 - 3.30 | £15.00 |
| Friday | 8.45 - 11.45 | £15.00 | 12.30 - 3.30 | £15.00 |
We look forward to meeting you soon! Contact the school office to book an appointment to come and visit us.
Reception has three classes with a recently redeveloped shared outside area to explore.
Our classrooms are bright and vibrant and reflect the children's learning and interests.
Jonny who works as a Paramedic brought his ambulance for us to have a look in and some uniform for us to try on. We learnt about what Paramedics do to keep us safe.
Today we came to school wearing red to raise money for Red Nose Day. We enjoyed a variety of activities throughout the day.
Nathan and Lee from Margate Police station came to visit us. They told us about how they keep us safe and let us try on their uniform and sit in the Police car! Lee turned on the lights and sirens – they were very loud!
We loved dressing up in our costumes to show our friends our favourite book characters – can you guess which characters we were?
This week we were visited by the police! We learnt all about their job and how they help us. They showed us their police car, their uniforms and equipment like the walkie talkie! We worked hard to ask questions and learn more about their jobs.
This week in Reception we have been making amounts to 10. We have explored lots of ways we can make amounts up to 10 using cubes, beads, numicon and our fingers.
Bobby and Keane wore their uniforms to school to celebrate World Thinking Day.
This week the children in reception have been learning about the Chinese New Year. They have created Chinese lanterns and dragon masks to celebrate the Year of the Dragon.
We had such a busy week continuing our learning through the story of the Gingerbread Man!
We found a map which we decided to follow. We suspected it was from the Gingerbread Man! Along the way we came across the characters from the story. When we got to the end of the map we found the Gingerbread Man, along with a chest of golden coins! We exchanged these coins for a gingerbread man biscuit!
We had another letter from the Gingerbread Man asking us to help him find a way to cross the river. We decided to make him a boat! We worked together to create a boat for him and put them to the test – with some great results (and some soggy gingerbread biscuits!)
We have been reading the story of the Three Little Pigs – we have enjoyed changing our voices for the Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf!
Mummy Pig wrote us a letter asking for us to paint pictures of her pigs as she was lonely without them. Unfortunately we had run out of pink paint! We discovered that if you mix red and white paint then you can make pink paint – problem solved.
We have been sharing the story of The Gingerbread Man. We have been learning Makaton signs to help us remember the story and have enthusiastically joined in with “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man”
We made boats for the Gingerbread Man to help him cross the river safely. We tested different containers to investigate which ones float and which ones sink. We found out that ones with holes in sunk! Also ones made of cardboard aren’t the best material!
Our favourite activity was baking and icing our Gingerbread Men!
Luckily the Gingerbread Men didn’t run away when we opened the oven!
We played hunt the Gingerbread Man in the soapy foam – it was very messy and lots of fun!
This term the children in reception are learning about Traditional Tales. This week we have been looking at the story Little Red Riding Hood. The children acted out the story, counting food from Grandma’s basket and carefully cutting out the fruit to stick into the basket.
We enjoyed dancing, playing pass the parcel and eating lots of party food! Everybody made a hat to wear to the party and loved wearing their own clothes. Happy New Year – see you in 2024!
We had lots of fun with our grown-ups! We made fluffy Father Christmas, cotton bud painting trees and a smiley snowman.
We enjoyed sharing a story at the end of the session.
Nursery performed We’re Going on A Star Hunt to a captive audience who enjoyed hearing some beautiful singing and watching some amazing acting!
Reception enjoyed Christmas Dinner Day! The tables were set up differently which meant that we could all eat together as a class. There were decorations and wonderful music playing. The food was very yummy! We had a great time 😊
We had a fantastic time at our Christmas party this week. We played games, shared Christmas food and had a wonderful sing along. We have had a wonderful few weeks celebrating Christmas. We hope you have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The Reception children enjoyed their day helping to raise money and learning all about Children in Need. They took part in different activities throughout the day and enjoyed drawing and colouring Pudsey Bear.
Pudsey Fever hit Nursery!
We talked about what makes a good friend, things we do to and with our friends and if they are kind or not so kind things to do. We wore odd socks and designed our own pairs of socks.
This week we have been participating in Anti-Bullying Week. We have identified what makes a good friend and how we can show kindness to others each day. We have made pictures of our friends and said why we like playing with them.
In the Reception we have been looking at the season of Autumn. During the half term holiday we collected Autumn treasures which we brought into school and shared with our friends. We talked about what we found and thought of words to describe how they look, feel and sound. We used a blind fold to help us think of these words.
We used the words small, medium sized and big to describe the size of the pinecones. We also ordered them from smallest to biggest.
We used our small motor skills to create spooky spiders and a web for them to live in.
We have learnt about Remembrance Day, creating some poppy artwork. We know that poppies were the only flowers that grew in the trenches.
We have been learning how to use balance scales to find out which objects are heavy and which objects are light.
The children came to school in non-uniform for Bags2School.
We have been sorting objects this week into different groups. Miss Kemp’s buttons were in a big muddle and we helped her to sort them into colour groups. Some of us sorted them into groups of different shapes too.
Rainbow Class are learning all about patterns – we played a matching game in the garden and created patterns using compare bears.
This week Reception have been exploring repeating patterns. We have used a range of objects to help us create and finish new and fun patterns. We have also used music to help us develop our listening skills.
We have been exploring our new environment – inside and outside! We are looking forward to learning more as the weeks go by!
Christmas in September! This year we are completing Christmas cards through Cauliflower cards. To allow enough time for cards to be printed we got started on our designs nice and early this week. This year Reception are creating reindeer cards using hand prints. We think they look very effective and we had so much fun getting messy making these!
This week the children in reception have been learning to match patterns on socks and talking about their favourite things – toys, food, places and animals. They have also been enjoying making friends and playing together.
We have had an amazing start to Reception. We have learnt the rules, made new friends and had an amazing time exploring the environment!
The reception children are still having lots of fun at Forest School. This week they learnt about fire safety and then they carefully toasted marshmallows on the fire.
This week we have been exploring more sharing. We shared out teddy bears between our friends to find equal amounts. We then had to help the teddy bears in our books to eat their snacks! We practised our careful counting and worked hard to write our numbers afterwards.
Our second week of Forest School brought us animal dens, tree identification and the art of Hapa Zome.
First up, it was the animal dens! We talked about the different animals that might live in the forest and then thought about where they would live. We then recreated their homes and had to really think about how we would keep them safe.
We set off exploring the forest and the flora. We looked closely at the leaves to help identify the different types of trees that were surrounding us. Some of them felt prickly, so we had to be careful! We learnt that this was to keep the tree safe from things low on the ground that might want to eat them.
We then explored measuring the trees to see how old they might be. Some of them were very old!
We then set about seeing if we could identify the different trees by feel alone. We paired up and took turns being blindfolded. We had to trust our partners to lead us to a tree that we could feel. We then took off our blindfolds and used our sense of touch to see if we could find that tree again.
Next, it was onto Hapa Zome! We used different leaves, flowers and petals to create art. This was our first experience of using tools at Forest School. We used a hammer to bash the leaves and flowerse between material causing the juices to come out and stain our material. We then turned them into flags to take home. They looked fantastic!
We can’t wait to see what is in store for us next week!
This week Reception enjoyed their first session at Forest School. We had so much fun exploring the our new outdoor learning environment!
We joined in with the whole school celebration for King Charles – we went out on to the playground with Reception, Year 1 and 2, played some games and ate a special biscuit and had a drink.
We also painted pictures of King Charles and made Union Jack flags to wave.
The reception children had lots of fun competing in races on their sports day.
We had a brilliant time at our Sports Day – we did running races, dribbled a football race, balanced a beanbag on a bat race and also seeing if we could throw a beanbag into a hoop race! Thank you to all the PE department for their help!
This week we have been exploring subtraction. We have been using the story, ‘The Tadpole’s Promise’ to use frogs to subtract. The children have enjoyed using a range of manipulates and playing games.
Last week we celebrated the coronation of King Charles III. We made flags and crowns to wear at our coronation party where we played games, ate coronation biscuits and even had a visit from Gala and King Charles himself!
We have had a brilliant start back to school! This term we are looking at life cycles and have been reading the story ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. We have then designed our own butterfly wings with paint. and exploring their new bug investigation role play area and look after their new caterpillar. It was a lot of fun!
We had great fun exploring different science experiments – we planted cress seeds and watched them grow, made rainbows using felt pens and kitchen roll and made milk dance!
We watched a fantastic science show – we loved seeing balloons exploding!
Miss Kemp showed us a very exciting experiment involving vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, this one went everywhere!!
We loved our visit to Little Seaside Town – it was amazing! There are so many different role play set ups – we pretended to be Chefs, Fire Fighters, Actors and Shop Workers!
Reception have had lots of fun during science week. On Friday their parents came into school to explore some science activities. Miss Smith began the session with an irrupting volcano. This was followed by Miss Bailey introducing our jar of cream experiment, everyone took turns to shake the jar of cream to see if we could turn it into butter. The children, with support from their parents, cut out hands and added string and straws to see if they could move the fingers. Lots of fun was had using salt and warm water to melt the ice balls to release the creatures from within. Finally, the children explored how to use a balloon to move the tissue paper wings on their butterflies.
Last week we had a special delivery of 5 eggs! They already had cracks in them so we were eager for them to hatch.
We spoke about the rules we needed to follow so that we could keep them safe and then completed some amazing writing about what we thought would hatch from the eggs. The ideas ranged from chicks and hedgehogs to dinosaurs and duck-billed platypuses!
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long as on the very day they were delivered we had two hatchlings!
Can you see what they are?
We left them to dry off overnight and by the next morning all of the eggs had hatched. It was a big fluffy mess in the incubator.
The ducklings were transferred to their new home and shown where their food and water was. It was not long before they were sound asleep under their brooder. It takes a lot of effort to hatch out of an egg.
They had a little run around on our carpets and we each got to say ‘hello’ and at the weekend they had their first swim in Miss Stannard’s Nan’s bath!
Each day they had a swim with a different class, and we now have some very big ducklings! We talked about the changes we could see and how much they had grown.
The weekend came around again and they had lots of bath times! Look how big they have gotten! We learnt that they grow 6-7 times their birth weight in 2 weeks, and it takes humans 7 years to do that!
At the end of this term they will be going to their forever home and will meet some new duck friends. We will receive pictures as they grow and are hoping for a visit when they are much bigger.
This week Reception had a visit from Margate fire station. They brought their fire engine with them and we got to explore all of the special clothing and tools that they use. We even got to hear the siren and spray the hose!
We had lots of fun with our grown-ups! We made fluffy rabbits, dotty eggs, collaged eggs and chicks with feathers!
We enjoyed listening to Brenda’s Boring Egg and a new story about different animals helping the Easter Bunny to save Easter!
This week the children in reception have been learning all about 3D shapes. They have been learning the names and properties of the different shapes. The children have been engaged in lots of different activities, including a 3D shape hunt around the school, colouring 3D shapes and the Mystery Bag shape game.
This term we are learning about people who help us. This week we had a visit from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. We learnt all about how they help keep us safe at the beach. We got to see all their different flags as well as try on their gear.
Vanessa came to talk to us about how to stay safe when we are at the Beach. She told us what all the flags mean, red means Danger! No swimming, the yellow and red flags are where we can swim and the black and white flags are where you can have surfboards. We loved wearing the Lifeguard’s uniform. She also told us about the Lifeboat Men and Women who will come to help us if we are in a difficult situation in the water. We learnt that 999 is the special number to call for help.
It is nearly Spring time! We went on a walk to see what we could find. We had a great time spotting birds, finding flowers and looking at seeds growing. Using the things we saw we will be creating a beautiful Spring picture.
As you know, this term we have being exploring People Who Help Us and were lucky to get a visit from a lifeguard. This week we had a visit from two police officers! They talked to us about their jobs and the things they do to keep us safe. They let us dress up in their uniforms and we got to sit in the police car!
Afterwards they put on the lights and siren for us to listen to! It was a great morning!
Special thanks to Miss Kemp for organising it for us 😊
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