Whittingham C of E Primary School Logo

Autumn 2025-26

Welcome to Early Years (Nursery and Reception), the class teacher is Mrs Marsden and the class are supported by Mrs Manners (Monday-Thursday) and Miss Forrest (Friday). Mrs Athey teaches RE and PE on a Thursday afternoon.
This page showcases all that we do in Early Years at Whittingham.

We had a super first week back at school, lots of investigating, making new friends, having our first PE lesson and singing and dancing and learning some new Pop UK songs!

We ended our week with a very special pop uk concert, it was fabulous! 

Our Toddly Play sessions have started each Wednesday morning with a welcome from 8.45-9.30 where refreshments are provided and then the session begins from 9.30. Some of our nursery children join with a member of staff and are thoroughly enjoying it.

We do forest school each week in Early Years and once a month we are joined by pre-schoolers for our 'Babes in the wood' session. In our first week we had great fun finding things we could use to do our Hapa Zome! Bug collecting and den building is also a firm favourite.

We have been learning how to paint and mix colours to paint our self portraits. The children took such care in looking in the mirrors to see the colour of their skin, hair and eyes and used the paintbrushes carefully to add detail.

Once a month we hold our 'Babes in The Wood' forest school session where pre schoolers and their parents can join us for a 'stay and play' session. In Septmeber we enjoyed the story of The Room On The Broom and we made potions and some of us made magic wands and broomsticks.

We have started our Read, Write, Inc journey and we are beginning to segment to spell words using our magnetic letters, find the letters to make the words to match the pictures and feed Fred as well as recognise the initial sounds in words. Some of us have been working hard on our letter formation by choosing to practise on whiteboards. 

In Maths we have been learning about patterns and beginning to learn to continue a pattern too. We have done this in lots of different ways.

One of our favourite things to do is making tunnels for the water to travel down. We work collaboratively to do this and have good fun too. 

We had a visit from a Community Police Officer - he talked to us about what the police do as well as car and seatbelt safety. We all checked to see if we needed belts, boosters or car seats and everyone in our class still needs a car seat.

On the 10th October we all came to school earing yellow to support Young Minds. We all looked very cheerful and learned about the importance of mental health and looking after ourselves.In Early Years we spent the day thinking about emotions, we recognised people’s different emotions and were able to pretend to be different emotions, we drew pictures of how we were feeling today too. 
Look at our super dingle dangle scarecrows that we made for our harvest service, don’t they look good?!

Today we had a special day learning about Diwali, we found out about why some religions celebrate Diwali from the story of Rama and Sita. We found out it is a special festival and is also known as the festival of light and it is celebrated each autumn, the specific date is determined by the lunar calendar. We found out about mendhi patterns, mandalas, diya lamps and Rangoli patterns and all had a go at these. We also made some traditional Diwali sweets and almost everyone tried them and they went down brilliantly! What a treat.

We have been busy making firework pictures ready for Mrs Arkle to decorate the hatch ready for our bonfire lunch after the holidays. We used conkers in paint to roll and create our pictures.

We welcomed Springs Dance Company who deliver dance workshops today to each class. We reflected on the schools connection to the parable of The Good Samaritan and links to our values of being kind, collaborative and courageous.

A grandparent kindly made a poppy for each child and member of staff in school for remembrance. Thank you! 

We also did some of our own poppies in art, some of us used crayons, felt tips and pastels. 

Mrs Arkle treated us all to a special bonfire lunch which we all enjoyed. Early years made wonderful firework pictures which Mrs Arkle used to decorate her hatch, it looked fab!

When the snow arrived, we got suited and booted with puddle suits, warm socks, coats, wellies, hats and scarves and had great fun in the snow making snow angels and sledging! Nothing stops us! 

A yearly tradition - we got to mix Mrs Arkle’s Christmas pudding and put our wishes in! We hope they come true!

Look at us using our phonic skills to segment words.

Mrs Athey has set up a lovely Christmas story role play area for the children, this will help support their learning about this in RE. The children have really been enjoying dressing up and retelling the story this morning.

What a special surprise we had for our early years and class one children, the big man himself, Santa! Each child got to meet Santa in our very own grotto. Each child also received a gift. It was a lovely experience for all the children. Before Santa left to get on with his busy jobs he let us all have a group photo with him and wished us all a merry Christmas!