Our Staff

Our Pre-School Room is led by caring, qualified and experienced practitioners who have a good knowledge of child development and how young children learn as well as a thorough understanding of the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and teaching young children.

A member of staff, designated as your child’s Key Person, will get to know you and your child. A close relationship between the key person and you ensures that your child’s individual needs are met, and their personal, social and emotional wellbeing is supported.

Our Routines

We ensure that we develop routines consistent with those that you have at home. We discuss with you your child’s personal care routines including toileting, feeding and sleeping to ensure that we understand and respect your preferences and to provide as much continuity of care as possible.

Our Pre-School Room

Our Pre-School room is a welcoming and friendly place where your child can feel safe and secure as they explore our inspiring environment which is rich in opportunities for active learning and equipped with resources that motivate your child to investigate and explore. We structure the pre-school environment in a very particular way to allow children to become engrossed in their activities and to work collaboratively in small groups. Our environment is a place where children can feel energised, stimulated, relaxed, comfortable and keen to learn. children in Pre school have direct access into our soft play area and play gym.

Our Curriculum

We offer a curriculum which ensures that children are given meaningful, interesting, practical play experiences that are going to allow them to become confident competent learners, who enjoy learning because it is fun. We combine child-initiated activities with direct teaching and adult led activities. We give children the opportunity to learn in a cross-curricula way through play as they explore different activities and experiences including;

• Investigation and Exploration – We provide resources to encourage your child to investigate and explore the world around them. We include opportunities to explore exciting things from nature and science to how things work and superheroes! Activities are designed to engage your child’s curiosity and develop their knowledge and understanding.
• Physical play – Children’s play is very active and physical, which is essential for development of their brains, heart, lungs, bones and bodies. It improves their movement and co-ordination and contributes to keeping a healthy body weight. Exercise improves their mood and self-esteem and helps them to learn. We ensure that they have lots of opportunities for physical play indoors and outdoors.
• Creative activities – provide lots of opportunities for creativity, investigation and exploration using sand, water, paint, playdough, clay as well as sticking collages or making models with cereal boxes and other recycled materials. Children can explore the mathematics of shape and pattern and add mathematical language to their vocabulary. They can discover properties of materials in the world around them and learn to use tools such as pencils, paintbrushes and rolling pins independently.
• Mark Making – Resources for mark making including pencils, crayons, paper and notebooks are available in most areas of the nursery to allow children to include writing in their play – such as writing a shopping list in the role play area. There are also specific areas for mark making equipped with additional resources such as rulers and rubbers, calendars and forms to encourage children to begin to make marks, patterns, pictures and eventually number and letters.
• Role Play – allows your child to recreate experiences and explore different roles. It encourages co-operation and creatively, supports communication, language and literacy skills and increases understanding of the world.
• Construction area – small and large blocks together with small world people, vehicles and animals allow children to create imaginary worlds and tell stories as well as developing their physical capabilities. Children can work collaboratively to solve problems.
• Music, songs and rhymes – We sing with children, listen to and make music together. We encourage children to listen carefully to different sounds in the environment, made by instruments and in rhymes. We explore rhythm and beat and have fun whilst supporting important communication and language learning.
• Stories and books – We share cosy times snuggling up with picture and story books. Sometimes we also use puppets to bring a story to life. Children listen, concentrate and enjoy joining in with stories and rhymes. They look at books independently retelling favourite stories from pictures and beginning to recognise written words. They learn how books work and how to respect them.
• ICT – We support children in exploring technology. We help them to develop skills to use equipment such as remote-control toys, torches, and a range of ICT equipment.
• Letters and Sounds – We use the ‘Letters and Sounds’ phonics programme which is designed to teach children how the alphabet works for reading and spelling. The activities we use from Phase One of the programme concentrate on developing children’s speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. We use these activities as part of our curriculum in order to link language with children’s physical and practical experiences. These activities pave the way for children to make a good start in reading and writing.
• Key Group Time – We have ‘small group times’ twice a day were each key group spends time with their Key Person focusing on a particular aspect of learning and development.

Learning and Development

The activities that we plan and provide are designed to support all areas of learning;

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal Social and Emotional development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding of the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We want children to be successful and effective in their learning. When we plan activities for children we, therefore, consider the different ways in which children learn and the characteristics that make them good at learning including actively learning through play and exploration and thinking critically and creatively about the things that they experience. These characteristics of effective learning provide a good foundation for learning throughout their lives.

Our Planning and Assessment

We differentiate our planning of activities so that we tailor it to meet your child’s individual needs and take account of their age and stage of development. This means that children who are gifted and those who have special needs, those who are the younger or older children in a group are all supported and enabled to make good progress in their learning. We make regular assessments of your child’s learning, development and progress.

We share information about the activities and experiences your child has at nursery together with information about the progress they are making in their learning and development both face to face and through our ‘Famly’ App.

School Readiness

In order to support children to make the transition to the next phase of their education with enthusiasm and confidence we take an holistic view of school readiness. We develop children’s confidence and self-esteem, their social skills and independence, their self-care skills such as toileting and using cutlery, their communication skills, curiosity and their ability to learn.

You will have peace of mind knowing that your child is enjoying nursery and being well supported to make good progress in their learning and development. You will feel confident that when the time comes your child will be ready for school.

Our Garden

The outdoor environment is a very important part of our early year’s environment as it offers significantly different opportunities for play and exploration from those we provide indoors. We have two small outdoors areas at the nursery and a large outdoor play area at St Michaels School. We also use the Forest School at The Marist School.

Play Activities

In the outdoor spaces at the nursery we provide activities with water or paint. We also have a mud kitchen for mixing and making mud pies.

Our Outdoor Play at St Michaels School

To enhance our outdoor provision, we have an agreement to use a large secure outdoor area in the grounds of St. Michaels school which is very close to the nursery. We use this area every day. It has AstroTurf and grass surfaces. There are some trees for shade. During school holidays we are also able to use their playground.

We take small equipment such as balls, hoops and a parachute together with crates and planks for building and making dens and equipment for mark making and imaginative play to enhance the activities we can offer. The children can explore the natural environment and have the space and freedom for physical play.

Forest School

The Pre-School children also take part in Forest School sessions at the Marist School where there are three designated Forest school areas set in 55 acres of woodland. During the sessions, which take place all year round and, in all weathers, children have the opportunity to experience the changing seasons, the natural environment, with plenty of time and space to explore. Children are encouraged to develop independence and self-confidence and will have hands-on experience of learning new skills such as building dens, making and using tools, finding and identifying woodland creatures, minibeasts and plants and cooking marshmallows on the open fire. Through all of these activities the children learn to respect their environment and keep themselves safe. The outdoor environment provides challenge and helps children to learn how to be safe and to be aware of others.

Walks and Outings

We like to get out and about in the local area. We have a 6-seater kiddibus so children who can’t walk very far can still join in. We regularly go for walks around the village were the children might buy ingredients for a baking activity. We go to the to the victory fields where there are swings, slides and climbing apparatus to use and visit the railway station to look at the trains. We sometimes take a picnic with us as well as paints, pens and pencils with paper to draw our surroundings.

The Special Nature of Outdoors

We know that outdoors is a special place for young children. It allows them to have real contact with the elements, seasons and the natural world. It offers them more freedom to be active, interactive, noisy and messy and to use all their senses. They can work on a large scale and use their whole bodies to do activities such as running, rolling, climbing, digging or building. Many young children prefer to be outdoors and find it easier to engage when opportunities for learning are offered outdoors.

Learning and Development

We value the outdoors and understand the potential it has for your child’s well-being and development.

Planning and Assessment

We ensure that we make the best use of what the outdoors has to offer and to effectively support learning. We make observations and assessments and plan for children’s learning outdoors just as we do indoors.

Communicating with you

We will share your child’s learning outdoors with you through photographs and observations on the Famly app and in discussions with you.