Children are powerful learners and we offer a play rich environment, inside and out, to achieve this.

We are truly an EYFS pre school

We believe wholeheartedly in the Early Years curriculum. We believe that children need to learn to be confident, resilient and kind people in order to reach their potential in primary education.

Our three main areas of focus are:

  • Communication and Language

    We offer a language rich environment and high-quality interactions. Our children learn the confidence to express themselves in different ways. The also learn the magic power of listening!

    We embedded communication and language development every activity we create and every routine we follow. From our play areas; offering daily greetings an object recognition, our noisy rhyme sessions and even to our messy play or craft activities where we an explore new describing words, colour recognition and doing words. We aim to add to our children’s vocabulary bank at every opportunity.

    We have a popular cosy book area where the children can take themselves to quietly look at a book or join a group story time. We even have small lending library for our families so they can share their favourites at home too.

    We encourage imaginary play through our small world-scapes, den building, puppet stage and dressing up box. These are wonderful opportunities to put their collective vocabulary to the test; learning the art of playing together and listening to each other.

    It is important to support families where English is as an additional language. We encourage children to use their home language at Pre School but also support them in learning English as they play and learn.

  • Physical development

    We create a multitude of activities to promote gross and fine motor skill development inside and outside.

    When children start with us they maybe exploring their physical skills; testing how paint can be moved around the paper, manipulating the brush in circular movements before adding vertical and horizontal ones. We encourage this exploration through fun sensory activities; shaving foam; sand boxes, jumbo chalks on the playground and even our popular cornflour gloop! As they grow in confidence their marks become more refined and their actions more purposeful. We create physical tasks to challenge our children too; our ‘play doh discos’, our indoor climbing equipment and even ‘Mini yoga’ all form part of our children’s week.

    Gross motor activities are invaluable to help support children in developing their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination, and agility. They provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and mind.

    Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy. We promote these through repeated and varied opportunities; puzzles, threading and novel crafts. We support children as they explore skills they possess as well as those they are keen to accomplish!

    We want our children to lead healthy and happy lives. It is key to their cognitive development also.

  • Personal, social and emotional development

    We arm our children with resilience, kindness, understanding, and confidence. A sparkling combination! Our staff work hard to build strong bonds with every child so they know they are in a secure, caring and safe environment; protected enough to explore and try new things!

    We take the time to focus on feelings; we learn from everyday situations, asking children to challenge why they reacted in certain ways, how another child might have reacted in the same situation and what tools they might use to demonstrate their emotions.

    We are keen to promote a healthy lifestyle to our children, alongside our parents and carers, educating them of the importance of looking after their body and their mind. It’s so important to start these concepts from a young age.

  • Our 'Always Open' outdoor play space

    We are lucky to boast a large gated outdoor play ground with sandpits, mudkitchens, play houses as well as lot of free space for outdoor games and activities inlcluding our vast store of tricycles, scooters and den building materials.

    Importantly to us, the children can access the outdoors whenever they want throughout the day.

  • Explorers Club Walks

    Children with us on Tuesday Afternoons join our Explorers Walk out into our local community wild spaces. We learn about the seasons as they change; make faces from picked buttercups, visit the allotments growing fruit and vegetables in the height of summer, collect fallen leaves and splash in many a puddle!

    We believe in the power of the outdoors and see it as our classroom!

  • Literacy, numeracy and vocabulary banks

    All learning is done through play! Our approach ‘sneaks’ introducing numbers, phonics, crafting and sports skills into our three main areas of focus.

    So we might set up ‘shops’ and learn about the role of the shop keeper helping other; whilst learning the number of eggs he’s putting in to a bag. We might listen for letter sounds in our ‘animal pose yoga sessions’ or introduce ‘catching’ in our ‘playdoh discos’.

    Play is the focus of all our learning.

How we plan our days

Our curriculum is unique to our setting and is based on where we believe each individual child needs to progress and the skills they need to acquire or fine tune. This is achieved by constant observation, dialogue with their families as we gain an understanding of their interests.

We ‘Plan in the Moment’, as popularised through the EYFS framework. So we can act quickly with the children’s ideas and run with them- making those ‘teaching ‘moments highly significant and progressive.

We recognise that children are powerful learners!

We offer a play rich environment, inside and out to achieve this. All children benefit from our high-quality interactions and enabling environment. The result is children leaving South Nutfield Pre School are confident, resilient, polite, friendly, and caring and ready for their journey to continue.