Welcome to Nursery

Welcome to Healdswood Nursery with Miss Spencer and Mrs Murnieks. Here at Healdswood, we provide engaging, open-ended resources across our indoor and outdoor learning environment to spark curiosity and a love of learning in every child.

We believe in creating a nurturing, stimulating space where children can explore, play, and grow at their own pace. Our provision is carefully planned to meet the needs of all children. We provide a warm, homely, and curiosity-focused learning environment that aligns with our whole-school approach to learning and development.

All about our Nursery

At Healdswood Nursery, children can join us from the term after their 3rd birthday. We offer both morning and afternoon sessions to suit your family’s needs.

• Morning Nursery: 8:35am – 11:35am

• Afternoon Nursery: 12:20pm – 3:20pm

We also provide places for children who are entitled to 30 hours of funded childcare (with a valid code).
These sessions run from 9:20am – 3:20pm, or families can choose an early start at 8:35am for a small charge of £3 per day.

If you would like to apply for a place, please contact the school office, and they will connect you with our Nursery Team.

For more information or help with your application, you can call us on 01623 462449 or email office@healdswood.notts.sch.uk

Forest School

On Mondays, our children enjoy their session in the Forest School area with Mrs Bowler and Mrs Murnieks. These sessions give children the opportunity to explore nature, develop confidence, and learn through hands-on outdoor experiences.

Children should come to nursery dressed in weather-appropriate clothing, such as waterproofs and wellington boots, so they can explore and play comfortably in all seasons.

PE

On Tuesdays, we allocate time for our PE sessions in the school hall. Children do not need a PE kit for these sessions — we simply remove our shoes and socks.

We would really appreciate your support in helping your child practise taking off and putting on their shoes and socks at home. This helps to develop their independence and self-help skills, which are important parts of early learning.

Our Library 

At Healdswood Nursery, we believe that sharing books at home helps to build children’s early language, communication, and literacy skills, while also fostering a lifelong love of reading.

Our library system offers a wide range of high-quality books for children to take home, share, and enjoy with their families. There is an opportunity to change books at the beginning or end of each session, and a record sheet is available to sign books in and out.

To encourage a love of reading, we celebrate every five books shared with a special Golden Box reward!

Alongside this, to encourage a love of reading, at the end of each week we choose one child to take home our special reading bag. Inside the bag are two or three books to share at home, a teddy to snuggle up with, a sachet of hot chocolate, a biscuit, and a journal to record their reading experience. The following week, children can share their reading adventures with the rest of the nursery. 

Our calm space

In our nursery, we have a designated calming area for children to use when they need a bit of space — whether they are feeling sad, angry, frustrated, or simply need some time away from the busyness of the environment. This space provides children with the opportunity to self-regulate and regain a sense of calm when needed.

Our fabulous learning environment!

 

 

Writing in Nursery

In Nursery, we take part in the Squiggle Programme each week. This involves practising pre-writing shapes such as lines, circles, hooks, and other early mark-making movements. We use scarves and ribbons to encourage large-scale gross-motor movements, and then we practise making the same shapes on paper using different writing media such as chalks, felt-tip pens, and crayons.

We also provide a range of writing opportunities within continuous provision, which the children can access during their play. We encourage children to write their name on their work, using name cards to help them look carefully and have a go independently.

Later in the year, children will use the ISHA lines to write their names as part of their morning task.

Nursery 2025 - 2026

Autumn term 2 - I wonder

 

• Winter - We have been learning all about Winter talked about how it looks and feels. 

 

• Christingle - We invited our grown-ups in for our annual Christingle making. Once we had made them, we lit them and sang Twinkle Twinkle Christmas star. 

 

• Its beginning to look a lot like christmas - We all worked together to decorate our nursery Christmas tree 

 

 

• All about India and Diwali – We learnt all about India and discussed how it is different to the country we live in. We located it on a globe, looked at traditional clothing, listened and danced to Indian-style music, spoke about the weather and tasted Indian food! We loved the poppadoms. We then learnt about Diwali – the festival of light – and made some diva lamps using salt dough. 

 

• Children in need

• Firework toast - We decorated bread using bright colours to make our very own firework toast for snack. 

 

• Bonfire week - We had a lovely week talking about our bonfire night experiences, eating hot dogs, dancing like fireworks, making firework toast and creating bright and sparkly firework pictures.

 

 

Autumn term 1 – What makes me unique 

• Grandparents day - We loved inviting our wonderful grandparents in for a book and a biscuit session.

 

• Bread making - We learnt all about Autumn and harvest time and spoke about hedgehogs hibernating. We then made our own hedgehog bread.

 

• Pumpkin Patch - We loved picking our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch and taking them home to decorate ready for the Octoberfest. 

 

• Take one picture - For our 'take one picture' piece of art, we looked at The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Hokusai. We discussed what we could see and then created our own interpretation of the chosen artwork. 

 

 

 

• Fruit faces  - We have been creating portraits in the style of Guiseppe Arcimboldo using different fruits and vegetables

 

 

Nursery 2024 - 2025

Summer 2 - Unexpected oceans 

Summer 1 - Once upon a time

 

Spring 2 - Nurturing nature

Spring 2 Learning

Pancake day

 

Making fruit kebabs

 

Chicks

 

Spring 1 - Imagine

Spring 1 learning

 

Number day

Chinese New year

Experimenting with colour 

Autumn 2 - I wonder

 

Our Christmas disco 

Autumn 1 - Where will I go?