What We Offer

In Nursery we learn through lots of play and playful activities (for example, going on a listening walk, looking for shapes in the outdoor environment and making constructions).

We have guided learning sessions with the adults throughout the day in small groups. We gather together to sing songs, play games and listen to stories.

Each half term our learning begins with a topic as a starting point to engage and inspire the children. Within this is the opportunity for the children’s own interests to develop and direct the course that the topic will take.

Settling In
Nursery begins with a settling in period to ensure each child feels safe and secure in their new surroundings, therefore we have a staggered entry over the first few weeks of term enabling adults and children time and space to get to know each other.

Each child is unique and takes on new challenges in a different way. If you feel your child is not yet ready for a full day or even a full session there is room for flexibility in the first few weeks so please speak to any member of staff to discuss how best to settle your child.

Our Areas of Learning
In Nursery we follow the EYFS curriculum which is based around the following seven areas of learning:

Prime Areas:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Communication and Language

Specific Areas:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We also plan activities and resource our environment to encourage children to develop their own ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’. Beginning to develop these skills, such as perseverance, taking a risk, thinking critically and making links, will equip them as learners throughout school and beyond.

For more information, please visit our nursery admissions pages

What is Forest School?

‘Forest School is an inspirational process that offers ALL learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a woodland or natural environment with trees’. 

(Forest School Association)

The Forest School Principles and how they link to our setting

• Forest School is a long term process of frequent and regular sessions. 
  • The Reception and Year 1 children across the Federation will have weekly Forest School sessions lasting 1 hour 45 minutes

• It takes place in a woodland or natural wooded environment:
  • Fawcett Primary School - Fawcett Primary has a little oasis of woodland within the school’s environment, which was planted by the then Year 6 children in 1992
  • Trumpington Meadows Primary School - has beautiful grounds on and around the school site, including two ponds, meadows, an allotment and the beautiful woodland alongside Bryon’s pool

• It will be managed by a qualified Forest School Practitioner
• We aim to promote the holistic development in all of those involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners
• We will offer learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and themselves
• We will use a range of learner centred processes to create a community for development and learning

Forest School Ethos

The ethos of Forest school is based on a fundamental respect for children and young people and their capacity to investigate, test and maintain curiosity in the world around them.

It believes in children’s right to play; the right to access the outdoors (and in particular a woodland environment) the right to access risk and the vibrant reality of the natural world; the right to experience a healthy range of emotions, through all the challenges of social interaction, to build resilience that will enable continued and creative engagement with their peers and their potential. 

Forest school is based more on the process of learning than it is on the content– more on the how than the what. This means that genuine forest school practice steps boldly out of the shadow and limitation of planned activities and ventures collaboratively into the realms of the unplanned, unexpected and ultimately unlimited. 

Children and young people are given encouragement to direct their own learning - this often requires on the part of the forest school leader either through stimulating play in the outdoors or through scaffolding, but mostly through simply observing how children are in the outdoors. 

Significantly, and on many levels, a woodland environment is central in supporting this very dynamic approach to learning; the passage of time from the changing of the seasons, to the contemplation of an ancient tree; the dynamic nature of an outdoor environment - an infinite source of smells, textures, sounds and tastes; a range of visual stimuli from near to far, high to low, very big to very small; and the infinite layers of historical, cultural, spiritual and mythological significance that speak of our deep relationship with trees and woodland through the ages. 

 (Above extracted from FSTC)