Our aims are to:

• Provide a safe, friendly, happy and stimulating environment for children from birth to 5 years old. With appropriate adult to child ratio
• Create and develop a caring, welcoming community for pre-school children which will enable them to feel happy, secure and respected
• Work closely with parents and provide a broad and balanced curriculum from the Early Years Foundation Stage, which fosters the intellectual, emotional, physical, moral, social and cultural development of children
• Enable children to make an effective transition from home to school
• Help the children become familiar with classroom routines
• Develop independence and decision-making skills
• Prepare children for a smooth and easy transition to mainstream education

Your key worker will assess the children continuously throughout the year to inform us of how they are progressing and to inform us what the next step in their learning will be. There is parent consultations available throughout the year where you will have time to talk about your child. Our learning Journals are online so that you can see the updates. We like to share their progress with you so you will have a feedback sheet to see what is happening at home as well.

All this will be achieved by providing child-centred activities which:

• Stimulate children’s creativity
• Enrich their language and literacy development
• Form the basis for mathematical understanding
• Encourage the children to observe and find out about the world around them, thus developing their curiosity to ask questions
• Encourage development of manipulative skills
• Enable children to come to terms with their own lives and express their feelings

Children learn about themselves and their world through concrete first hand experiences which include carefully directed play and the purposeful use of language as a tool for thinking about, exploring and expressing ideas. We also do lots of fundraising for our local community and the wider World which gives the children understanding, respect and feelings for others that are less fortunate.

Children will follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which is structured into the following four distinct but complimentary themes:

• A Unique Child, recognises that children are competent learners from birth the staff will encourage them to be resilient, confident and self-assured.
• Positive Relationships, encouraging children to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and key workers.
• Enabling Environments, the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning.
• Learning and Development, recognises that children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates, and that all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.

The statutory learning goals are expectations for most children to achieve by the end of the EYFS and can be broken down in to seven main areas of development and learning:

• Personal, Social, and Emotional Development
• Communication and Language
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Physical Development
• Expressive arts and design Development.

Planning will take place by observing the children, then using what we have learnt to inform our planning for that child’s next steps. We do have a calendar of activities and celebrations that take place throughout the year and these will be introduced by staff, however if you would like your child to talk about any festival or celebration then please feel free to inform the staff so that we can include this is our daily plan.

We will be using the Ten Town, Jolly Phonics Sound Schemes and several reading schemes. This does not mean, however, that these will be the only schemes used as we hope to develop individuals who can fit easily into school life anywhere. Children are encouraged to develop a love of reading and you can support your child by reading with them regularly. They will bring home 2 types of reading book. The first the children choose from the Nursery library and the second is a reading book that is appropriate for their current reading level when we feel they have developed and are ready. In the very early days, reading will involve telling a story using the pictures.

They will have a Reading Folder in which these books will be put, along with a reading diary and any information we need to communicate with you. This will be treated as a two-way method of communication between ourselves and the parents.

We are very lucky to be able to take advantage of the facilities at Windlesham House School. The children will also benefit from Music and Foreign Languages and farm walks each week.