Our Pre-school children

Our pre-school group are our ‘big’ children, although they’re usually only 3 turning 4! It’s just lovely to sit down with them and have a conversation….the things they tell us!

More time is spent with adult led activities at this age as their attention spans are longer than babies and toddlers, and they are ready for a little bit longer time spent with an adult guiding their play to teach them something new.

As we are a small nursery, the children tend to know each other very well across all the groups. Our pre-school children are very good at visiting the babies, helping a toddler with, for example, their shoes, and at making friends. We promote kindness, friendliness and care and concern for others.

Our pre-school staff must be a jack-of-all-trades, from building skyscrapers out of lego to drawing complex unicorns, often at the same time. Then on to supporting taking turns in games (very hard for a three-year-old!) and having tea parties in our lovely little kitchen area. They must know all the latest pre-school characters, as how can you talk excitedly about Paw Patrol if you don’t know who they are? There’s one member of staff for every 8 three- to four-year-olds.

To see photos of our pre school, check out our gallery

Getting ready for school

Eventually our children leave us to go to school  It’s always sad to see them go, but such a good feeling when we see their happy little faces going to ‘big school’. We are always so very proud of them all.

To make the transition easy for them, we begin to ‘talk them out of nursery’. We talk about how fantastic school is, how they’ll meet lots of new friends and teachers etc etc. By the time they go, they just can’t wait to get through the doors!

We have a very special lady visit us in the last few weeks our children are with us, she is called Mrs Q, and is a teacher. She works with the children on things that happen at school that are different to nursery; for example, putting their hand up to speak, and staying foccussed on a task for even longer. She does specific work on phonics and maths with them, active listening and working in a group, just as they might at school but still in a very fun way. She gives them all a certificate to show their new teacher. Feedback from children is they LOVE Mrs Q, and just learn so much!