Welcome to The Nest (The Den). Whilst our extension is being built, we have moved out of The Nest and into a new room we’ve called The Den but this will be changing back shortly!

Each day we take part in a variety of activities including both adult-guided and child-led learning. We have opportunities to experience music and movement, books and stories, mark-making, arts and crafts and many other things.

Our learning is themed to a topic each term, plus time for each child’s own interests woven in. We have special curriculum days/weeks too and develop our understanding of the world with activities to celebrate seasons, festivals and special events.

Full Proposal Rise Park Primary SEN Provision

Welcome to The Den!

What are we learning through and about this year?

Spring 1

Autumn 2

November and December have been very busy with lots of learning about stories with dragons, and plenty of festivals, celebrations and special events. Julia Donaldson was our author this half-term, with Room on the broom and Zog as our focus texts.

As artists we collaborated to design a shield, had fun with stickers and made bubbly cauldrons.

For nursery rhyme week we sang number songs; 5 little ducks and 5 little speckled frogs were our favourites! We have also been exploring and sorting the coloured, tactile shells on the lightboard.

Exploring sand, dough and water were favourite activities this half-term. These sensory experiences helped us learn about texture, properties of materials and supported our muscles and hand strength.

The end of term was all about Christmas! We decorated reindeer bisucits, enjoyed a stay and play with our families and had so much fun dancing and playing games at the Christmas parties.

Autumn 1

We have explored ourselves, families and where we live through the story ‘Goldilocks and the 3 Bears’ and the book ‘We feel happy’.

For our creative learning we used lots of different tools to explore paint, including our hands, balloons, blocks, and sponges.

Our construction play has been helping us to explore shape, space and position. We also had opportunity to learn about size, sorting and quantity.

We have listened to the Goldilocks story and shown interest in handling books too. To support our mark-making experiences we have used pens, chalk and brushes on a range of surfaces. Making marks on the iPad was great fun too.

Our learning about the world has seen us get hands-on with exploring autumn leaves, conkers, acorns and harvest festival foods. In Space Week we were creative with balloon-printed planets and star sticker constellations. For Diwali we played with coloured rice and henna hand patterns.

Our fingers have had a great workout with lots of playdough play to practise our rolling and manipulating skills. We have also enjoyed yoga, using the large sensory equipment and play with bats, balls, beanbags and hoops to support our larger motor development.