Language learning at Lime Grove Day Nursery

There was excitement at Lime Grove Day Nursery in Hemel Hempstead as the grandparents of one of the children made a special visit, having travelled over from their home in Spain. 

Inspired by the experience, pre-schoolers were delighted to delve into co-research on the country using books and interactive resources, exploring famous tourist attractions including La Sagrada Familia, creating their very own Spanish flags and practicing basic words, as well as learning ‘Buenos Días’, which is the ‘Hello Song’ in Spanish to practice greetings.

To support the visit, colleagues from the Ofsted-rated ‘Outstanding’ Day Nursery on Park Road pulled out all the stops for the family, who speak limited English, creating bespoke resources in Spanish to give them a detailed overview of their grandchild’s day and learning journey, as well as using specialist ‘talking tins’ to record and translate detailed dialogue.

During the session, Nursery Practitioner, Sandra Reddyhoff showcased her Spanish speaking skills by helping the family and colleagues at the setting to communicate, acting as a translator and support for the group as they toured the exciting nursery environments.  

Lime Grove Day Nursery Team Leader, Robyn Shuck explained;

“We are absolutely committed to supporting our families with English as an additional language and we use a variety of strategies to achieve this, including using voice recordings, key words, survival words, books and mantra lingua technology. It was an absolute pleasure to welcome our special visitors and this presented lots of lovely learning opportunities. We would also like to thank Sandra for being such an integral support during the visit.”