Sessions

The majority of our sessions are known as open sessions and the age range spreads from 2 years up to those starting school.  They are planned around a broad topic for the half term e.g. ourselves, homes, shapes and colour, animals. Each week a sub-topic is introduced e.g. red or triangle, together with a sound and number of the week.

The children are encouraged to bring in items of interest related to the topic, sound or number of the week. They are discussed at “chat time”. Playtime is outside whenever possible. 

All activities for these sessions are designed to fit in with the government’s Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which sets out the learning goals children are working towards before starting at school. The areas and aspects of learning cover personal, social and emotional development; communication, language and literacy; mathematical development; knowledge and understanding of the world; physical and creative development.

In the open sessions we maintain an adult to child ratio of 1:8 for over 3s and 1:4 for under 3s.

We are also running a lunch club on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which is open to children attending either the morning or afternoon session on these days.

We are also offering parents to take-up ad hoc sessions if they are required, for example to allow rising 5s to do a full day before starting school, to allow parents to attend a doctor’s appointment etc. This will be administered by the staff at the pre-school and the charge will be £10/ session (£4/hour).

Flexible 15 timetable September 2010

Key Changes from September 2010

• Friday morning will be the new “settling in session” for 2 year olds (previously known as Rising 3’s) and Monday morning will become an open session for all children.

• Morning “family” sessions are open to all children from when they leave the settling in session until they start school, encouraging a family atmosphere at Pre-School.

• Afternoons are for funded children only.

• Pre-school will be open for 4 full days on Mon to Thurs for funded children to give parents increased flexibility of hours. It does not mean that the pre-school is advocating that this age of child should be attending full days at pre-school.

• Gardening, computing, music and other activities will be incorporated into the normal sessions where possible.

• Outdoor or Forest School afternoons on Tuesday and Thursday will replace the Outdoor Friday and Rising 5’s Forest School sessions:

• These sessions will now be open to children from the term after they are 3 (i.e. when they get funding).
• To transition to the new timetable, those leaving Pre-school in December to join school in January will keep their existing sessions and will get a Forest School session each week (on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays).
• Children who are new to Forest School will need to select their preferred session (Tue or Thurs) and will get alternate weeks of Outdoor or Forest School activities, as they currently would have done with Outdoor Friday.
• Children in these sessions will be split into two groups by age. One group will go outside and do the outdoor activity most appropriate to their age. The other group remaining in Pre-school will be able to do an activity that can be done with a smaller group, such as cooking or book work (for older children).