Nursery
Key Information
All children should wear uniform which is clearly named.
Doors open at 8:45am and registration is at 9:00am. Pick-up time is at 3:00pm. Please drop off and collect your child from the Nursery external door.
Please ensure your child always has a spare set of clothes, wellies, their book bag and water bottle in school every day.
Nursery Admissions
Children are eligible to begin their free nursery entitlement (15 hours) the term after their third birthday. Parents are welcome to register interest for a nursery place up to two years in advance, by downloading and completing the attached form below. Once completed, you will need to hand the form to the office staff along with the child’s original birth certificate for checking. Please note that the school office opening hours are 8am to 4pm. Children are allocated places according to Wigan Council’s admission criteria.
Admissions Criteria for 30-Hour Places
The government has introduced an on-line service to check eligibility for the free 30-hours’ childcare offer. Parents/carers can check to see if they qualify by clicking on this link:
Is my child eligible for 30 hours?
If eligible, parents/carers will receive a code which they must present to the school in order to allocate and plan for the 30 hour places.
Children who receive 30 hours placements attend Monday-Friday whole days. For those who receive 15 hours, we offer a beginning of the week (whole day Monday, whole day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning) placement, or an end of the week (Wednesday afternoon, whole day Thursday and whole day Friday) placement.
What have we been doing in Nursery?
Mothers Day Tea Party
We invited our Mummys, Grandmas and other special ladies into Nursery to celebrate Mothers Day. The children helped to decorate the tables, and prepare the food and drinks to help their grown ups to relax.
Easter
Thankyou to our families for making such a fantastic effort with the Easter bonnets this year! The children looking absolutely fantastic, and it was so difficult to decide who was going to be the winner! This year we were looking for bonnets that were made from recycled materials, and which were most child-led. The children were so proud to wear their bonnets around the school, waving at the older children and different grown-ups. Then we went into Bluebell Garden, where the Easter Bunny had hidden eggs for us all! Later, the children decorated the Easter cross, adding a flower that they each brought in.
Happy Easter, everyone!
World Book Day
Here at Winstanley, books, stories and reading are essential to our learning every day, which is why we absolutely love a day which is dedicated to those things. World Book Day was a great success this year. The children particularly loved coming in with their costumes on, talking about their favourite stories, they enjoyed visitors such as the dinosaur from 'Dinosaurs love underpants' and the scarecrow from 'The Scarecrow's Wedding'.
World Book Day also saw the launch of our Early Years Lending Library, which is free for all Early Years families to access at their own leisure.
Pancake Day
In Nursery, we spoke about Shrove Tuesday and why people used to use up the remaining ingredients ahead of Ash Wednesday. To celebrate, we enjoyed making pancakes, the children were involved in making the recipe, sourcing the ingredients, pouring, mixing, measuring and taking turns. Once cooked, the children chose their own toppings, before sitting down to enjoy a tasty and well deserved treat.
Big Garden Bird Watch
We joined the RSBP Big Garden Bird Watch this year. We spoke about why birds are important, the different types of birds that visit our local area, and how we can take care of them. The children made bird-hides, bird-feeders and binoculars to help us to spot as many birds as possible.
Eli our Empathy Doll
Eli is a very special member of Winstanley nursery. Eli is an empathy doll, though we do not treat him like a doll, we treat him like another child. He has a uniform, book bag and lunchbox, and has thoughts and feelings just like the rest of us. Eli helps us to recognise, label and validate our emotions. For example, if we know that one of the children is having a new baby sibling, we will talk about Eli having a new baby, and how he may 'feel excited about meeting the baby, but also a little bit nervous because he doesn't know what to expect, and doesn't like the idea of sharing his toys'. Using Eli to explore such thoughts and feelings helps children to develop emotional intelligence, and to know that their feelings are okay.
We have already noticed that children who are less confident are already connecting with Eli, and we are beginning to see different parts of their personalities shine through.
Welcome to Winstanley, Eli!
Our visit from the Dummy Fairy!
Some of our children decided to give their dummies to the dummy fairy recently, who takes dummies to poorly babies around the world. Following conversations with parents, we agreed that all of the dummies would be collected from around the house, put into the special fairy box, and left with a picture drawn by the child. Later, we heard the magical sound of fairy bells, and ran outside to see if she had been. Sure enough, the dummy fairy had been and taken the dummies away, and left a special teddy and letter for the children. Well done to our brave children!
Chinese New Year
As we prepared for Chinese New Year, we looked at the country of China, it’s capital city, Beijing, and the Great Wall of China.
We learned that it is far, far away, and has lots of people (1.3 billion!) We looked at the different traditional
Chinese clothing including the Qipao and the Hanfu, and enjoyed wearing some of these in Nursery.
We learned that there are different languages spoken throughout China, but the most commonly spoken language is Mandarin. We all practised saying hello in Mandarin... “Ni Hao!” We learned about how tea is very important in China, and practised pouring tea, as well as tasting tea.
Then we talked about Chinese New Year, and why it is celebrated, the story of the animal race, and the zodiac. This year is the year of the tiger! We learned some of the traditions of Chinese New Year, including cleaning the house to sweep away any bad luck, and how houses are decorated with paper lanterns and scrolls. We decorated our own lanterns, painting them with Chinese numbers, cutting them, and joining, before hanging them up across Nursery.
People enjoy banquets of different traditional foods, and chopsticks are usually used to eat food, instead of knives and forks. We enjoyed making Chinese stir fry, and using chopsticks to taste it.
Dragon dances and lion dances are a traditional way to celebrate the festival. We enjoyed watching some on the television, before using junk modelling to create our own dragon. Finally, we practiced beating the drum to the rhythm, doing our own dragon dance around school to entertain the older children.
Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
Mountain Monkeys
We would like to say a huge thankyou to Mountain Monkeys for coming in to school to show us how to toast marshmallows on the fire, and then doing some team-building games with us.
Pumpkin Picking
We are passionate about being in touch with the natural environment and getting out into the community, which is why we visited Kenyon Hall farm to pick pumpkins ahead of the Halloween festival. Leading up to the trip, we explored different vegetables, why some grow underground whilst others grow over. Following the visit, we enjoyed painting, planting, tasting, carving and decorating the pumpkins, and everyone took one home to decorate with family in time for Halloween.