Telephone Number : 0114 7020104
Rooms
Baby Room
In the baby room we take children from the age of 3 months up until 18 months when they will then start a gradual move to the Monkey room, where the children are aged 18 months to 2 years 3 months.
From the age of 3 months, babies are given new experiences according to their individual needs. At such a young age babies learn through their senses.
We believe that sounds, smells, physical contact, singing, games, reading books, and talking to your baby is vital; as well as encouraging physical skills for crawling, standing, and walking.
Enjoying games such as peek-a-boo, clapping and finding hidden objects will be part of your child’s daily play. There will also be opportunities for one-to-one interaction with staff and other children. Weather permitting your child will also spend some time playing outside.
Your child will begin to experience natural materials such as sand and water as well as discovering the pleasure of play dough and painting all with close supervision.
We aim to follow your child’s own feeding and sleeping routines so that from an early age a relationship of trust and confidence is formed with us.
We welcome parent's feedback and will always make time to discuss your child's progress and development with you as well as any other comments or concerns you may have.
Monkey Room
The children in Monkey room are aged between 18 months and 2 years 3 months. We take up to 12 children each day and have a ratio of 1 adult to 3 children under 2 and 1 child to 4 children over 2. In the Monkey we have 4 main staff members who have key children.
In the Monkey room we aim to encourage your child’s:
• Physical development – helping them to become more confident in walking, going up and downstairs, climbing the outdoor play equipment and running. We also encourage the children to feed themselves, try new tastes and textures and by the end of monkeys be able to drink from an open topped cup.
• Social interaction with other children and adults, encouraging and supporting them in forming friendships and bonds with those around them.
• Language and communication – develop language and understanding by interacting with them throughout the day playing together, reading stories, singing and during group time.
Your child will also have the opportunity to learn through the various tactile and messy activities we provide on a daily basis. Things such as sand and water play, playdough, pasta, jelly etc. We also do lots of messy activities including free painting, bubble and sponge paining, junk modelling, sticky pictures….the list is endless.
We will take time to look at colour recognition, simple shape recognition and counting.
All this is done through play and having lots of fun.
We will be doing monthly observations on your child which will go into their individual development records. Please don’t hesitate to talk to us regarding your child’s development and progress within the room or if you have any concerns or comments you may wish to discuss.
Panda Room
The children in the Panda room are aged between 2 years and 3 months and 3 years old. We take up to 16 children each day and have a ratio of 1 adult to 4 children the Panda room has 3 main keyworkers working on various days throughout the week. We also have regular support from other members of staff who the children are familiar with, many of these are doing their modern apprenticeships with us to become fully qualified early years workers.
Our aim is to offer your child new experiences according to their individual needs, encouraging them to learn through play as much as possible.
In the Panda room we hope to encourage your child’s:
• Concentration and attention by providing a variety of exciting toys and activities.
• Numeracy skills for example counting by rote to ten and beyond and recognising some numbers.
• Social interaction with other children and adults, encouraging and supporting them in forming friendships and bonds with those around them.
Your child will have the opportunity to learn through the various tactile and messy activities we provide on a daily basis. Things such as sand and water play, playdough, pasta, jelly, cold custard etc. The many, many messy activities we do include free painting, bubble and splatter painting, junk modelling ……. The list goes on.
We also aim to promote and encourage your child’s language and communication skills by interacting with them during planned and spontaneous activities which include reading stories, singing and during group time.
As we enjoy time outside, we ask parents to provide their child with suitable clothing for the weather as we tend to go out come rain or shine.
Tiger Room
The children in Tiger room are all aged three to four and a half years old. When your child joins the Tiger room, they will be assigned a new keyworker. There are four members of staff who work in the room on a ratio of one adult to eight children.
Our aim is to offer your child new experiences according to their individual needs, encouraging them to learn through play as much as possible. We focus on:
- Number, shape, letter, and colour recognition
- Recognising and beginning to write their own names
- Social interaction with other children and adults
- Promoting independence
- Having fun while learning!
In Tigers we have three rooms which we use that are set up everyday with activities that are based on the children's interests and spontaneous play. Over the different rooms we have various areas for the children to explore including but not limited to mark making, role play, small world, sensory, messy play, and construction.
We promote language and communication skills by interacting with the children during planned and spontaneous activities.
Each week we have a different letter (Phonic) and number that we focus on encouraging children's recognition. We will do pictures relating to the letter and number of the week so the children can see them around the room. Jolly phonics is popular with the children, and we aim to do this daily as a fun group activity, it's also a great educational way of learning letters and sounds.
We encourage the children to be more independent. They are given a coat peg and a signing in card with their name on, these are put out each morning for your child to sign themselves in and out. They are also encouraged to find their own coat pegs giving them the opportunity to carry out small tasks.
In Tigers we choose two children to be a star of the day, being star of the day means you help set out for lunch and snack and help carry out small tasks which in turn encourages independence and builds self-confidence.
Front Garden
During outdoor play we encourage the children to move around and explore the space available to them, providing them with opportunities to be aware of the natural world and how it changes over time for example the weather becoming colder or warmer or the leaves on the tree in the garden changing colour and eventually falling to the ground as the seasons change. We also encourage the children to hunt for mini beasts as they give us the chance to talk about life cycles. The most popular one is looking at how caterpillars grow and change into butterflies.
While using this garden the children have access to a variety of equipment to help develop their fine and gross motor skills including the swings, slide and climbing wall, trikes, scooters, and balance bikes. There is also a playhouse where the children can develop their imagination through using our many, many role play toys and a mud kitchen where they can make mud pies among other delicious and disgusting creations.
We have a selection of large bricks to encourage the children playing on the garden to work as part of a group while also developing their hand-eye coordination as they fit the bricks that join together into place and their problem-solving skills and logical thinking as they try to stack the bricks that don't fit together on top of each other.
There's also a book area for the children who want a little quiet time. To ensure the children get the most that they can out of the garden we provide small world toys such as the cars or farm animals, and mark making equipment encouraging them to make both large and small marks.
Back Garden
We have a large back garden that is used mainly by the younger children in the nursery (3 months to 18 months and 18 months to 2 years) although the older children do have the opportunity to play on this garden when it isn't in use.
While playing on the garden we encourage the children to use their senses to explore the different areas we have, providing them with opportunities to do planting activities in our planting area where as well as developing their fine/ gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination they are gaining knowledge on how to care for the seeds, bulbs and flowers they have planted so they thrive and grow.
When taking part in these activities we encourage the children to notice any mini beasts they may have uncovered, talking about how many legs a spider has, why a woodlouse has a hard shell or how a worm moves around, we also talk about different life cycles using books such as the hungry caterpillar as a visual aid.
The children on this garden are encouraged to make use of all of the space available to them, as many of them aren't walking or are a little unsteady on their feet they do this in a variety of ways including crawling, shuffling and rolling.
All of the children have access to outdoor equipment which helps to develop their gross motor skills and encourages them to learn new skills including a wooden swing set which is suitable for the younger children, a larger slide, and swings for the slightly older children, see-saws and a climbing frame. We also do group games using the large balls we have or the parachute.
Children have the opportunity to use their imagination through role play activities and the small world toys, and make large and small marks with our mark making equipment including the large sidewalk chalks.
They have access to a sand pit where they can explore the texture of the sand, and make sandcastles if they choose to, helping to develop their problem solving skills as they learn that the sand needs to be damp in order for it to stick together, and a water tray where we encourage the children to listen to the sound the water makes when they hit it/ splash it around or use the toys inside to pour and tip the water from one container to another, helping to develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination
