Nursery

In Nursery it is our aim to provide a warm, welcoming environment, where every child feels happy, secure and nurtured. We understand that happy children who feel safe and listened to become confident learners. Each child’s self-esteem is promoted through positive encouragement, specific praise and tailored support.  Highlighting and celebrating the positives throughout each Nursery session ensures that all of our children have a clear understanding of our high expectations of them and they are therefore really proud of themselves, and each other, when they continue to achieve them.

Children learn best through first-hand experiences so we encourage discovery through play and active learning. Areas are regularly enhanced in order to provoke curiosity and build upon what children already know and can do so that they experience regular success and therefore develop in confidence. Each child’s creativity and problem solving skills are promoted through the choices they regularly make about which areas to access and who their play partners will be. The adults skilfully scaffold and extend the children’s learning throughout the session through well timed comments and questions and through ‘wondering’ out loud. Although we have planning in place with ideas to introduce throughout the Nursery year the children’s interests always take precedence and we will regularly adapt our plans in order to follow their curiosities and interests.

Our children always have access to the outdoor environment as we follow the Scandinavian philosophy that there is no bad weather, only bad clothes. We embrace the different seasons and weather and use them as teaching tools for our children to experience first-hand.

‘The best classroom and the richest cupboard is roofed only by the sky’

Margaret McMillan (1925)

Learning outside of the classroom supports the development of healthy and active lifestyles by offering children opportunities for physical activity, freedom and movement, promoting a sense of wellbeing. Outdoor play also supports children’s problem solving skills and nurtures their creativity, imagination, inventiveness and resourcefulness.

This academic year we have also signed up to complete The Daily Mile in order to improve the children’s fitness and their social and emotional wellbeing. It involves making a commitment to be active as a class for 15 minutes each day. This doesn’t necessarily have to be through running, although most children like to run around with their chosen friends. It can also be walking and talking with friends / adults or a combination of walking and running. The only certainty is that we are all outside in the fresh air having fun together for 15 minutes every day.