Our Little Doves environment

 

Our setting is a purpose built small traditional Nursery in a fantastic rural location with ample space for indoor and outdoor classrooms. We provide a dedicated baby room for children up to 2 years and then an upper 2’s - 4 year’s preschool room for up to 15 children. Both our rooms have direct access to the outdoors. The garden areas can be accessed directly from both areas. During outdoor play we offer structured, guided, supported or free flow play. The garden has large play areas with artificial grass as well as covered areas providing all weather play opportunities and an all year round outside learning classroom. These areas all lead onto a natural garden and a separate forest school and den making area for free flow play and structured forest school workshops.

 

The Baby room is made up of a large play area, cosy book corner, low level play tables, small world play, early mark making, treasure baskets and children’s interest resources. We also have an excellent sensory area and a separate sleeping and changing cove. The room provides large low-level windows with farmland views. Our vibrant invitations for group times offer a vital forum to support young children’s language and communication and are run by motivated and trained practitioners, the children are stimulated interact and engage from babies to rising 5’s.

 

 The pre-school is set up with activities that children can access on low level shelves and most of the activities are graded in levels for the children to work through. We have Montessori designated areas including practical life area, sensorial, including shape work, early colours and numbers and literacy. There is an assigned expressive art area, role play area and large play barn floor. Within the room there are child sized toilets and low-level sinks to encourage independence in health and self - care.

 

We plan activities that we know will interest your child and support them in their learning and development, working towards the Early Years Framework at their own ability and pace. Most of our learning is through investigation, exploring and a curiosity approach. We encourage the children to choose their own activities and explore both with our support and independently.

 

The Pre-school (upper 2’s) has a routine that’s flexible, but it’s in place so that the children feel secure and comfortable. In the pre-school we explore free flow curiosity play, rolling snack time building on self -help skills, preparing and self -choosing for snack time, learning how to use tools to prepare and self-serve. There are opportunities for sleep and rest in our quiet areas.

 

We have ample group activities such as parachute games, ring games, speaking and listening games, letter and sounds that children can take part in. Children are invited for singing and story- telling throughout the day and we also take part in helicopter story time, we provide opportunities for individual key worker periods and key persons will gain the best outcomes. Practitioners will carefully scaffold,childrens learning and interact with your children to get to know there skills and readiness for each stage. Our environment is set up for every child to gain their full potential learning skills for the next stage. We ask ourselves -What does your child know? And what do they need to know? What are their interests?

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