Horn S Mill Pre-School

Horn’s Mill Pre-School

Denbigh Close

Helsby

Frodsham

Cheshire

WA6 0ED

Supervisor: Mrs Sue Huntbach Tel: 07853403764

Horn’s Mill Pre-School aims to:

q provide high quality care and education for children primarily below statutory school age;

q work in partnership with parents to help children to learn and develop;

q add to the life and well-being of its local community; and

q offer children and their parents a service, which promotes equality and values diversity.

As a member of Horn’s Mill Pre-School, your child:

q is in a safe and stimulating environment;

q is given generous care and attention, because of our high ratio of adults to children;

q has the chance to join with other children and adults to live, play, work and learn together;

q is helped to take forward her/his learning and development by being helped to build on what she/he already knows and can do;

q has a personal key person who builds up a relationship with your child and helps settle them into Pre-school. The key person is responsible for completing the summary of Progress, Prime Areas, Specific Areas and their Learning Journey documents to ensure your child is making progress in all developmental areas.

q is in a pre-school which sees you as a partner in helping your child to learn and develop;

q is in a pre-school, which parents help to shape the service it offers.

Horn’s Mill Pre-School’s Background:

Horn’s Mill Pre-School was founded in 1984 and Sue Huntbach , Pre- school manager has been involved since the start, Pre-School has since gone from strength to strength and with ever increasing numbers and the introduction of lunch club in 2007 and then the introduction of Breakfast and After School Club in 2010, more childcare practitioners were required. All childcare practitioners attend regular training sessions.

The Pre-School is held in the mobile classroom, which is situated in the grounds of Horn’s Mill Primary School. We are independent of the school, but we enjoy a good working relationship. The classroom is heated and brightly decorated with its own facilities, i.e. children’s toilets, staff washroom (including nappy changing station) and kitchen. The main area used by the children is one large room, which offers complete observation and supervision. Outdoors, at the back, there is an enclosed soft rubber backed play area with a slide and climbing frame, wooden play house for role play, two sheds that our outdoor toys and equipment are stored in, a quiet area for looking at books, sand pit with toys, large block play and a canopy which provides shade and shelter and enables the children to use the outdoors all year round. We have direct access on to the school playing field and into the woodland area. The gates are both securely locked when staff and children are not in either of the areas. The woodland area enables the children to experience the wonders of nature and to be relaxed and inventive about exploring. We ask you to please provide a pair of wellingtons that can be left at Pre-School. We provide waterproof all in one suits allowing us to make the most of outdoors come rain or shine.

The service offered by Horn’s Mill Pre-School:

Pre-School operates on a term-time-only basis.

We are open Monday to Friday 7.45am – 6.00pm. Monday’s are for our Rising 5’s only.

We offer the following types of care between the following times:

7.45 am until 9.00 am – Breakfast Club

9.00 am until 11.30 am – Sessional Educational Care

11.30 am until 12.30 pm – Lunch Club

12.30 pm until 3.00 pm – Sessional Educational Care

3.00pm until 6.00pm – After School club

We provide care and education for young children between the ages of 2 and 4+ years.

Our Breakfast and After School club is for all children within the Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.

No Smoking:

Pre-School and Horn’s Mill School are both a non smoking site.

The Curriculum provided by Horn’s Mill Pre-School:

Children start to learn about the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by Horn’s Mill Pre-School helps children to continue to do this by providing all of the children with interesting activities that are right for their age and stage of development.

For children between the ages of 2 and 4+ years, the pre-school provides a curriculum for The Early Years Foundation Stage. The Early Years Foundation Stage is a mandatory document which sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning that gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.

The Early Years Foundation seeks to provide:

· quality and consistency in all early years settings, so that every child makes good progress and no child gets left behind;

· a secure foundation through learning and development opportunities which are planned around the needs and interests of each individual child and are assessed and reviewed regularly;

· partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers;

· equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported.

The Early Years Foundation Stage specifies requirements for learning and development and for safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. The learning and development requirements cover:

· the areas of learning and development which must shape activities and experiences (educational programmes) for children in all early years settings;

· the early learning goals that providers must help children work towards (the knowledge, skills and understanding children should have at the end of the academic year in which they turn five); and

· assessment arrangements for measuring progress (and requirements for reporting to parents and/or carers).

The safeguarding and welfare requirements cover the steps that providers must take to keep children safe and promote their welfare. ( please refer to Safeguarding Policy in Welcome pack)

Overarching Principles

Four guiding principles should shape practice in early years settings.

These are:

· every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured;

· children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships;

· children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers; and

· children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

We at Horn’s Mill Pre-School are looking at how the child is developing, ensuring we value all children as individuals regardless of any additional needs. We keep the children safe although allowing them to explore and develop healthily physically and emotionally at the same time.

We encourage the children to make friends and build a relationship with their peers as they learn to respect each other. It is important that their key person begins to build a relationship with them from the moment they enter our setting so they can begin to trust and form a secure attachment with them to aid their development. They will overtime build up relationships with the other staff members but their key person will be their main carer.

We wish to work with you the parents as you have the best knowledge of your child and together we can support their learning and encourage them to become independent. Whilst ensuring that we listen to and respect your child as they develop.

Through observation and assessment we are able to plan for your child individually within the indoor and outdoor environment whilst allowing continuity of care.

When your child starts at Pre-School you are welcome to bring them on several visits and stay with them until they feel secure with their new environment. Your child is allowed to bring with them a favourite toy which helps them to feel secure.

We have an excellent relationship with the school, we take the children into the school hall each day for lunch, we take the Rising 5's into school for PE and join the reception class for music and fun in the woodland area.

We welcome visitors in to our setting to talk to the children. For example, our local policeman comes into our setting to talk to the children about his work. If you know of anyone who would like to do this please let us know? We also take the children out for walks in the local community.

The Areas of Learning and Development:

There are seven areas of learning and development that must shape educational programmes in early years settings. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Three areas are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive. These three areas, the prime areas, are:

· communication and language;

· physical development; and

· personal, social and emotional development.

Providers must also support children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied. The specific areas are:

· literacy;

· mathematics;

· understanding the world; and

· expressive arts and design.

Children’s learning is through play and we allow them to explore the indoor and outdoor environment. We allow them to make decisions on what they want to do during the session by asking them what they want to play with individually at the end of circle time.

The childcare practitioners are responsible for planning for each of their key children and plan for the child’s individual interests, by observing them at play. Each child has their own Learning Journey which their key person is responsible for keeping up to date; this enables us to track each child’s progress, whilst we are also encouraging them to be independent and make decisions on what they want to do.

The Prime Areas:

Communication and Language