Welcome to the Home of our
Hedgehogs, Foxes and Owls
Here at St Michael in the Hamlet Community Primary School (S.M.I.T.H) we have a Nursery (Hedgehogs) as well as two Reception classes (Foxes and Owls).
Our Nursery takes children from age 3 upwards. Both Nursery and Reception follow the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage, (EYFS).
* If you would like to enquire about a place in our Nursery please contact ao@smhsch.co.uk *
* Please click here for our Admissions page for information regarding Reception Open Days for our 2024-2025 intake.*
Our EYFS Curriculum at S.M.I.T.H
Our EYFS curriculum is based on the four guiding principles.
The intent of our EYFS curriculum is to support and develop children’s learning by building on their interests, abilities, ideas and experiences. Our curriculum therefore is fluid rather than fixed. We are led by the children, to ensure every child’s individual needs are met. Children need to have the confidence to explore. They need to be active in their learning and be able to persevere if they find things a bit tricky so that they can be proud of their achievements. They also need to be able to develop their own ideas and a make links with previous learning.
Within our planning we will also include the Seven Areas from the Early Years Framework: Communication and Language, Physical Development, Personal Social Development, Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Designs.
As well as planning lots of learning experience for our EYFS children here at S.M.I.T.H, we also embrace the wonder of child-led free play which is the foundation for our children to become self-motivated learners. This approach also helps our children to: builds resilience, support social-emotional development and unleashes their creativity.
In Nursery and Reception, we follow the Pathways to Write scheme for Literacy. In Reception we also use Maths No Prombem for Maths, Monster Phonics for phonics coverage, the Liverpool SACRE scheme (linked to the teaching of Religious Education) to enhance the ‘understanding the world’ section of the early years foundation stage framework and SCARF to support our PSHE curriculum. We always strive for our teaching and learning to be engaging, interactive, practical and fun!
To further enhance learning at home, we send home readers home and we also allocate e-books and maths games online through Active Learn. We love setting up home challenges on Class Dojo and then sharing some of our fabulous home learning on Class Dojo and Padlet too!
Take a look a typical day in our school
Each half term we have a theme or topic. This helps support children when they transition into year 1 and beyond.
Nursery’s Topics
| Autumn 1 | All about Hedgehogs |
| Autumn 2 | Traditional Tales |
| Spring 1 | Animal Tails |
| Spring 2 | Growing where? |
| Summer 1 | Who are you going to call? |
| Summer 2 | We’re all going on a summer holiday |
Reception’s Topics
| Autumn 1 | Don‘t Stop Me Now! |
| Autumn 2 | Somewhere Only we Know |
| Spring 1 | Ticket to Ride |
| Spring 2 | Our TRUE Colours |
| Summer 1 | Walking on Sunshine |
| Summer 2 | We can be HEROES |
Our Outdoors
We are so lucky here in our setting to have several large outdoor spaces for our teaching, learning, discovery and play.
Click our S.M.I.T.H link to be transformed to our Early Years OUTDOORS!
Keeping you Informed
Class dojo
Dojo is an excellent app to show our families what the children are getting up to on a weekly basis. We share lovely photographs and key messages on our class stories. This updates most frequently and will let parents know about things happening in class such as; day trips, enrichment activities, special events and visitors. It equally allows families to privately message the class teacher if they would like to ask or share something with us too. This is the most effective and responsive communication tool with the teacher.
Please also keep an eye on the S.M.I.T.H school story. On here you will find key messages, competitions and upcoming school events.
Other ways we Communicate
In S.M.T.H, we will be communicating with our families via a system called Parent App. Here, we send texts and emails with important school life information and you can keep all of your details up to date too/. In the meantime, we will keep you updated on Class Dojo stories.
We also have a school twitter account @St_michael_ham where class teachers post pupils work, videos and positive messages for our community.
If you need to contact school the email address: ao@smhsch.co.uk these message will be answered promptly or forwarded to the relevant staff.
