FS1 Overview
Clever Kittens (FS1)
Our nursery is a vibrant, nurturing, and inspiring environment where young children flourish. Every child is recognised as unique, and their individual needs, interests, and abilities are at the heart of everything we do. Children learn through rich, meaningful play experiences carefully planned to spark curiosity and imagination. Whether indoors or outside, every area of provision is purposefully designed to promote exploration, creativity, and independence. A language-rich environment fosters confident communication. Staff engage in high-quality interactions, modelling language, asking open-ended questions, and supporting vocabulary development throughout the day. Our setting celebrates diversity and promotes a strong sense of community. Every child is included, respected, and supported to achieve their best. Children with additional needs receive tailored support in a sensitive and inclusive manner. We value strong partnerships with parents and carers, working closely with families to ensure continuity between home and nursery. Regular communication shared learning journeys, and open dialogue help build trust and shared goals.
Over the year we host a number of open evenings and stay and play sessions so that you can come and view our school and provision. If you would like further details on this then please contact the office to book in.
The adults in Clever Kittens are:
Mrs G Bradwell (Teacher), Miss L Cutler (Teaching Assistant), Mrs L Green (Teaching Assistant), Miss H Jones (Teaching Assistant), Miss L Hutchinson (ISG Teaching Assistant)
Autumn 1
The Clever Kittens have now settled well into their exciting adventures of school life at Redscope.
Our first topic theme has been ‘This is Me’ and we explored all about our feelings through the book ‘The Colour Monster’. Every day as the children come into class they find their photograph and place it on a particular Colour Monster depending how they feel.
We learnt about the Artist, Andy Warhol and painted a picture of our face or hands in the Artist’s pop-art style using bright colours. Children were able to show different emotions in their face paintings such as happiness and sadness.
We asked the Clever Kittens to bring a photograph of their family and pets into school to put into our floor book. We spent time with children encouraging them to talk about their photos and memories they have about their family.
We looked in the mirror and used our fine manipulative skills, tools and techniques to create our own portrait with clay. They are all mounted on display in our classroom, but don’t worry, they will be coming home.
We went on an autumn walk to Barker’s Park. On our walk we had the opportunity to notice different aspects of the outdoor environment in our local area and changes in the season. We found brown, orange, red leaves, conkers, acorns and all natural materials we could use to create an autumn collage. We also had a ‘listening moment’ to listen for sounds around us whilst walking in the woods. We tried to name and describe the sounds we heard to help us in our phonics learning. We could hear the birds tweeting and the wind making the leaves on the trees rustle. We used our senses to notice different sights, sounds and smells.
We had Stay, Play and Learn sessions to welcome our parents/carers into our classroom environment and to show them what we have been learning. We used our beautiful autumn foliage and treasures we had gathered whilst we were out exploring on our walk to create an autumn collage. It was a terrific way for our young children to combine art and nature. For the background of our collages, we used a painting technique called – Smoosh painting! (Children blended and mixed colours together with their hands on top of the cling film). It is a wonderful way for children to observe what happens when colours are blended together and it is a lovely sensory experience.
This half term, we used ‘Talk for Writing’ to narrate a non-chronological report about ‘How to keep our teeth clean and healthy’. Vocabulary Cat helped us to learn new vocabulary and the meaning of new words singing our Word Rap and clapping the syllables in the words. This inspiration came from a special visit from the Dentist and Dental Nurses from Kimberworth Dental Practice to teach us how to look after our teeth. We now know that we should brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes, after breakfast and before going to bed. We also need to eat healthily to keep our teeth healthy and visit the Dentist regularly.
We celebrated TT Rockstars day by being ‘Super Subitisers’. Children began their learning journey of subitising (the ability to instantly recognise the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them). We were able to be super subitisers using conkers, pinecones and other resources. Through number rhymes, e.g. 5 Little Monkeys, we talked about simple addition and subtraction and how the number grew bigger when we added and smaller when we subtracted/took monkeys away.
As part of the preparations for the schools Pumpkin Patch event, we had a great time creating our scarecrow taken from the book “The Scarecrows’ Wedding” by Julia Donaldson. Clever Kittens used acrylic paints to paint his face. They made a paper mache head, stuck on two googly eyes and stuffed the scarecrow with packaging. See if you can spot him on the school field. We also read the book ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper and then made our own pumpkin soup outside.
What a busy half term! Please look at the photographs of our first adventures.
