Our Preschool (2-4 yrs)
Core to our ethos is understanding the learning & development needs and interests of each individual child. Balanced with helping the whole Preschool community to build healthy relationships with each other, their key workers and linking their learning to what can be supported at home.
Each child's learning journey begins with allowing time for your child to feel safe and secure within the Preschool, exploring the different areas, resources, and spending time getting get to know everyone. Your child will be allocated a Key Worker when they join us, who will work in partnership with you to build those positive home/school relationships and ensure that together we support your child's learning and development needs.
As a team we plan a varied and stimulating curriculum based on the children's interests, covering all areas of the EYFS. Our Special Educational Needs and Disability Coordinator Linsey Matthews (SENDCO) works with the team, liaising with professionals to support any children with additional needs to ensure that they can access all learning opportunities. Our curriculum is a working document that is regularly reviewed and updated to grow with the pace of your child’s development. We encourage parents and carers to take an active role in this process.
Children are assessed through observation (ie as a natural part of their play and normal activities) and a statutory progress check is undertaken when they are between 2 & 3 years old. This check identifies their strengths in the three prime areas of the EYFS, providing a clear pathway for developmental progress. This progress check is then discussed with parents and carers to ensure that your child's future learning and development needs are met, both at preschool and at home.
At Preschool each child has an Tapestry online learning Journey, which helps us to share and allows us to build a very special record of each child’s experiences, development and learning journey throughout their time with us. Using photos, videos, and diary entries, your child’s key worker ‘weaves’ the story of the child and how they are growing and developing. You can access these securely (each child has their own secure account) and add your own comments and annotations if you wish. In this way, learning and development at pre-school is responsive to the child’s natural interests and abilities and encourages regular input from home.
Being a rural, village setting we love the outdoors and make every opportunity to engage our children’s learning with Stithians and the beautiful environment we are naturally surrounded by. We love trips to the park, walks in the autumn leaves and enrichment activities that engage the children with their local community. Amongst other things, we recently (2021) took part in the Stithians scarecrow competition, visited the local church to make individual scarecrows with wooden spoons, as well as joining in with the ‘world kindness through pebbles’ day. Being located in purpose-built setting at the back of the Stithians Centre & library we are really fortunate to have two separate outdoor spaces of our own where we can ‘Go Wild!’. Part of our 2021/22 School Development Plan is to re-equip and update these to allow for all-weather play and learning.
Each year we sadly have to say farewell to those children that are ready to make the transition to their next setting, be that primary school or an alternative learning environment. Many of our children transition together to Stithians Community Primary School with whom we are always seeking to forge closer links. However, whatever setting your child transitions to, we are always proactive in ensuring that we do all we can to ensure their transition is an exciting and positive experience, including meeting with their Reception teachers. Of course, many we still see at B4 & L8 Club (our wrap-around provision), and it’s lovely to see children that we first met at 2 eventually transition to senior school at 11!