Our light and airy, fully resourced Preschool rooms provide direct access to a large, safe and secure garden areas. This allows us to extend learning activities in both areas. All three rooms; Owls, Rabbits, and Squirrels cater for children when they are ready to transition from the toddler rooms until they are eligible to go to school.
Practitioners work on a ratio of eight children to one adult ensuring that children are provided with the highest level of care. Preschool children as in every other room, have a key person and buddy system in place meaning that children have at least one familiar face to which helps them to cope with personal care and anything else they may need whilst in our care. The role of the Key person is to also track your child’s development and plan for next steps, this allows practitioners to see where support is required and work out how this can be put into place through continuous provision. Continuous provision is the weekly planning for the room, this stays the same throughout the week to ensure that all children are provided with the same opportunities for development.
We have a number of well resourced areas which the children can have access to both planned and spontaneous activities. Our messy area provides children with a range of different resources encouraging them to be creative such as painting, drawing and sticking. The home corner allows children to express their imagination, engage in role play and reflect their home life in their play by displaying behaviours that they often see at home such as caring for a baby or cooking dinner.
Providing children with a range of construction materials such as Lego, wooden blocks and re-cycled modelling allows them to get creative constructing their own towers and buildings, this also helps children to experience problem solving and build mathematic skills. Each room has access to computers where children have access to educational games and applications which the children are able to use for limited amounts of time throughout the day.
Each preschool room has a book area, this is a quiet, cosy area where children can spend time looking through a book or joining in with a sing song. This is also an area where children can have some time out from the business of the preschool room.
We also have access to a large atrium which is used for extra-curricular activities such as ‘Soccer Sports’ which helps children to further their physical development, listening and understanding skills and ‘Little Alice Theatre’ which helps children to explore expressive arts and design. Little Alice Theatre also allows children to develop their personal, social and emotional skills. The children take part in these extracurricular activities on a 2 week rota. Extra-curricular activities are provided at no extra cost.
The Preschool team are friendly and approachable giving feedback at the end of each session and completing weekly observations on eyLog which parents can have instant access to. Parent’s evenings are held once every six months which gives you a chance to talk to your child’s key person regarding development and progress. This gives parents and key people a chance to consolidate relationships, identify and set up support required.
For some 3-4 year old children, the setting is able to apply for Early Years Pupil Premium. The Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) is additional funding for early years providers which they can use to improve outcomes for children who are in receipt of the free entitlement, by supporting their learning and development. We will work in partnership with you to carefully consider the learning and development needs of your child and will support them in the following areas:
- personal, social and emotional development
- communication and language
- physical development
