East Brent Pre-School is situated in the grounds of East Brent Church Of England Academy, nestled at the bottom of Brent Knoll. We are based in the school hall and as well as this we are also able to use all of the schools facilities and the Reception playground every day. We are surrounded by the countryside and encourage the children to take advantage of this and we frequently take the children out to explore the local environment such as Ralph's wood, the local park or Brent Knoll.
We are a friendly, small team and this enables us to develop close relationships with all of our children and their families who are with us. We really value the opportunity to develop ongoing dialogues with parents about their child's interests and progress.
We work very closely with the school and the Reception class so that the children’s transition to school is smooth. The reception team get to know all our Pre-School children whilst they are with us and we frequently shared activities with both Pre-School and Reception children together to enhance our links with the school.
We provide all our children with enriching activities to allow them to learn through their play. We want all of our children to feel nurtured, valued and stimulated when they are at Pre-School with us. We focus on the Prime areas of Learning: Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language and Physical Development along with four specific areas of learning literacy, mathematics, expressive arts and design and understanding the world.
Our Early Years Curriculum is based on Development Matters. We have looked at the objectives and have plotted these across all the areas of the curriculum and have ensured that they are progressive from two years old until the end of Reception. We then use a variety of themes, children's interests and needs to teach these objectives. We have a two year rolling programme of themes to help children to develop a wide interest in a range of themes as well as ensuring that they aren't covering the same things every year.
Here are some of the themes that we help children to explore. These themes may change and progress depending on the children's needs and interests! We use 'I wonder questions' to spark the children's learning.