Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, children begin more structured Literacy and Maths sessions, supported by hands-on activities that encourage active learning. We use Monster Phonics to build Literacy skills, with teacher-led sessions twice a week and follow-up activities available throughout the week. Starting in the summer term, children take home reading books each week, with individualised sound targets to reinforce phonics learning.

Maths is integrated into daily activities, often through circle time or interactive play, making learning fun and engaging.

Our learning environment has been carefully designed to support all areas of the Early Years Framework. Indoors, we offer areas for role play, mark making, investigation, art, small-world play, and reading, along with a finger gym to build fine motor skills. A large carpeted space is used for circle time and group activities.

Outdoors, children can explore our wendy house, climb equipment, use a chalkboard, and enjoy a rotating tuff tray with new activities daily. Our role play area changes every half term to match our six themed topics: Space, Food and Festivals, Seasons, Superheroes, People Who Help Us, and Fairytales.

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, which includes PE, Music, Expressive Art and Design, and other enriching subjects like French and Forest School. Forest School is particularly valued as it helps children learn about the environment through hands-on activities, which research shows also improves language development, social skills, and concentration.

Mrs. Budd, our Kindergarten class teacher, is also Deputy Headteacher at Forest. She is supported by Mrs Singer and Miss Naylor. With a 1:8 teacher-to-child ratio, the children receive close attention and support, particularly in phonics and numeracy, which are planned by Mrs. Budd. Specialist teachers further enrich the children’s experiences in music (Ms. Wellings), French (Madame Tourigny) and PE (Mr. Rimmer), In Kindergarten, the children start to visit the ‘Art Room’ within the original house for their weekly Art session and are taught by our specialist Art teacher, Mrs Thomson.

Our effective pedagogical practice comprises a mixture of children learning through play, by adults modelling, by observing each other, and through guided learning and direct teaching.

As early years educators, we provide a stimulating environment and model kindness and a positive attitude to learning, ensuring children feel supported and encouraged.

By the end of the pre-school year, children will have achieved key academic and personal milestones, such as:

• Developing independence in tasks like putting on coats, zipping them up and putting on gloves.
• Regulating their emotions and identifying strategies to manage feelings like anger or sadness.
• Strong tripod pencil grip and forming some or all letters of their name
• Secure understanding of numbers 0-10
• Awareness of phoneme-grapheme correspondence, particularly with the first 6 sounds (satpin)
• Recognizing sound differences and beginning to blend and segment sounds in CVC words.
• Some children begin their reading journey in Kindergarten and begin to segment and blend CVC words.

Children’s progress is monitored through both formative and summative assessments. We use Tapestry to track ongoing development against Early Learning Goals, working in partnership with parents to build a comprehensive Early Years Profile for each child. Additionally, we conduct our own internal assessments each term. The results of these are fed back in our termly reports and parents evenings. We also use the Wellcomm tool to identify any speech or language barriers.

In the school holidays, Nursery and Kindergarten remain open, with the exception of one week at Christmas, one week at Easter and the last two weeks of the summer holidays, so that we can give our setting a much needed deep clean.

The Nursery is open from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm, with the added bonus of being flexible and is bookable on a pay-as-you-go basis.Our high standard curriculum activities continue in the school holidays, plus a bit of extra fun!