Peterborough Pre-schools

More Information

Our pre-school focuses on supporting and encouraging our children to be curious, imaginative, independent and resilient through our careful selection of resources and exciting environments which include regular access to outdoor learning and the local community.

See our online prospectus for full details.

You can also see our pre-schools in action on our Facebook Group page

Our staff

Our staff team are skilled and experienced, and work to progress each child's development, looking carefully at early identification of additional needs and areas of learning that may require extra focus.

The pre-schools adhere to the statutory requirements for staff:child ratios. This means that there will always be a minimum of 1 staff member per 4 children under the age of 3, and 1 staff member per 8 children aged 3 and over. Wherever possible we exceed the minimum requirements with our staffing levels.

Our Learning Environment

You may notice that our learning environments are a bit different to the traditional early years setting.

They feature furniture and items that you may have at home which helps create a comforting and homely space that feels familiar to the children. We include lots of natural materials and neutral colours to generate a calming space.

Using real resources rather than shop bought toys means that some items need to be handled more carefully to avoid breakages. We believe this teaches children to respect their environment and to start to understand the consequences of their actions. There is still a place for manufactured plastic resources within our settings, but these are diminishing. Children are also supported to care for their environment by helping with small tasks, looking after the garden and clearing up after themselves at snack time.

Our pre-schools offer the children lots of opportunities to use their natural curiosity to explore and learn. We provide open ended resources and loose parts that encourage imaginative play. For example, our construction area will include log slices, sticks, pebbles, wooden planks, pine- cones and many more natural items that a child is free to create with. We believe that if you provide a child with a shop bought car garage to play with it will usually be played with in the same way every time; offer them a selection of wooden planks and other natural building materials and they will create their own, ever evolving garage that allows them to explore how different gradients affect the speed of the cars and which building techniques are the most successful.

Nature is important to our wellbeing, and we ensure that the children are offered the chance to learn more about the world around them. Staff support them to explore nature’s creations including using herbs in their play, looking at the properties of unusual fruit and vegetables and caring for wildlife. Children have daily access to our outdoor learning environment where they are supported to learn to risk assess and try new challenges. They use all their senses to experience the changes in seasons and learn how to dress appropriately for all weather conditions. In addition our staff offer wider learning opportunities by exploring the local community.

EYFS Curriculum

The provision for children’s learning and development is guided by the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

The EYFS promotes learning through play and by providing a range of interesting resources and activities that are appropriate to a child’s individual stage of learning and development.

View our full curriculum here

Policies

View all our policies here