St Monica’s is a very popular Nursery providing early education for 3-4 year olds. Children are eligible for a place the term after their third birthday. The Nursery is open during school term times. Many children attend St Monica’s Nursery and then transfer to St Monica’s School, which makes for an easy transition for the children. Our Nursery offers a great start to your child’s education whether he/she stays at St Monica’s or moves on to another school.
We offer either five morning sessions (8:45am – 11:45am), five afternoon sessions (12:30pm – 3:30pm) or 30 hour sessions (8.45am – 3.30pm daily, including an extra 45 minute lunch time) per week. All children are entitled to the five free morning or afternoon sessions each week and some children are entitled to the extra 15 hours per week also funded by the government. If we have spaces available, we offer the extra 15 hours to people who are not entitled to the government funding, at a cost of £12.00 per day (£60.00 per week).
Each member of staff within St Monica’s Nursery is highly trained and skilled in early years’ education. The Nursery class is led by two experienced teachers who work with a range of other skilful and knowledgeable early years practitioners.
In St Monica’s Nursery, we are deeply committed to providing high quality education and care in a friendly, safe and happy environment. Children learn and develop in our big, bright classroom and large outdoor area through a wide range of rich learning experiences and sensitive adult support. Our indoor classroom leads directly to our outdoor learning environment, which we share with the school’s Reception classes. Our large outdoor area has a paved area, an undercover area and some mature trees and grass. The children can go outside whatever the weather.
The Nursery has an excellent range of resources to support the children’s learning. We value our environment and resources and teach the children to do the same. Our learning spaces are organised to enable children to independently access all areas and resources.
We support and develop children’s learning through a combination of planned play, child-initiated activities and adult-led learning opportunities which are relevant to the individual interests and needs of each child. All children are supported to make progress according to their unique needs and abilities.
Each child has a learning journey recorded on our online program ‘Tapestry’. This is a record of his/her learning and development and contains photographs and observations of activities each child is carrying out in Nursery with a link to the Early Years curriculum. There are contributions from all the Nursery staff and we also welcome contributions from families.
We recognise that parents and carers are their child’s first teachers and believe that they have an important role in working in partnership with the Nursery staff. There are many ways that parents can be involved in their children’s learning at our Nursery:-
