Guest Sezbina Posted January 20, 2004 Posted January 20, 2004 Does anyone share their playground between Nursery and Reception? It would be intersting to know how you manage your outdoor time. At present we have three time slots in the morning for Nursery and the two Reception classes to go out and then repeat this in the afternoon. We would like to explore other ways of managing our outdoor play time so that the children mix more, creating more of a "foundation Stage feel!" : Anyone got any good ideas?
AnonyMouse_73 Posted January 20, 2004 Posted January 20, 2004 Hi Sezbina, welcome on board if you havent been welcomed already. And if you have, welcome anyway We share our outdoor space and its miniscule for the increasing number of children we have. We had previously shared our outdoor time, but as the numbers grew, we found that the quality of play deteriorated. Now that we have free choice that includes outdoor we can usually accommodate thosee that want to be outside from either nursery or reception with staff working on a rota. As the weather improves and we find that more of the children want to be outside, we tend to split the day into nursery sessions and reception sessions. Its not ideal but its safer and the quality of play is vastly better. They have to have the space at dinner times and that is when we have most of our problems. I would much prefer them to be able to be out together, but it just wasnt right for our circumstances.
Guest Posted January 21, 2004 Posted January 21, 2004 Hi, i am currently doing my teaching dissertation on the outdoor area and the school where im at have an excellent outdoor area for the foundation stage unit. In the morning's the nursery children have exclusive assess to this area and the reception children have weekly timetabled slots. However, to encourage the ages to mix together the school have a stucture where on wed's and fridays the reception class and nursery class split into two mixed classes. one teacher takes the 'indoor' group and another takes the 'outdoor' group and they rotate within the two days so all have a turn at both. The groups are also changed termly so that the children mix with different children. This works well as it address the issue of staffing aswell and introduces nursery children to the reception teacher!! p.s it is really interesting to see the ways in which the two ages interact with each other. Hope that's any help to you!!
Guest Sezbina Posted January 27, 2004 Posted January 27, 2004 Thanks for your ideas. We've decided to stick to our present set up until the Summer term and then trial a few different ideas to see what suits.
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