structured sessions
All sessions are carefully structured and led by fully qualified staff. Each
session is designed to promote and develop your child’s creative, physical and
social skills.
We use a carefully planned curriculum giving all children an opportunity to
succeed in an atmosphere of care and of feeling valued. We endeavour to provide
a stimulating environment for your child to learn progressively and to support
your child’s learning through planned play activities to promote their
creativeness and imagination.
curriculum
Our curriculum reflects the six areas of learning for children of playgroup and
preschool age.
- personal, social and emotional development;
- communication, language and literacy;
- mathematical development;
- knowledge and understanding of the world;
- physical development;
- creative development
A good example that combines these areas is free play.
Different experiences within the session and term themes will provide your child
with opportunities to develop a number of skills and concepts across these areas
of learning. A detailed copy of the curriculum is provided to you as part of the
welcome pack before your child starts at The Windmill.
planned play
Planned play, both indoors and outdoors, is a key way in which your child will
learn with enjoyment and challenge. Through play, children behave in different
ways, sometimes their play will be boisterous, sometimes they will describe and
talk about what they are doing, other times they will be quiet and reflective as
they play. All children at The Windmill benefit from planned play activities
with our carefully planned and challenging environment, promoting the
development of language and communication in their play.
a stable and calm environment
Any child starting pre-school, nursery or play school for the first time will
obviously be emotional and so will their parents / guardians. At The Windmill we
understand the importance of a familiar environment, that is bright, active and
remains calm at all times. To promote your child’s confidence to try new
activities and initiate their own ideas, it is important to provide a wide
variety of choices and opportunities for self initiated activity. We provide
support for your children to develop independence and self-confidence using
structured sessions with well-defined areas of interest, such as craft, reading,
painting, music and rhythm and for the older children a ‘one-to-one’ between
child and teacher. The sessions are also small, a maximum of 17 children and
well staffed, one teacher and two assistants per class.
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our library
We offer an extensive library within each class for children to use during the
sessions and to provide the daily class story. The library is also a lending
library for your child, each child has an assigned library day where they can
choose 2 books to take home and read with you. In 2008 the library contains over
1800 different books.
what is free play?
This could involve children building with blocks, they may have to help each
other in carrying the blocks, they would need to work out the best place to put
them, then comparing the weight and dimensions of different blocks they carry
out an imaginary scene in order to construct a free standing tower.
Through this seemingly simple activity they
would be developing communication, mathematical, physical, personal and social
skills.