Laughter & Learning

‘Play is the child’s work’, and is the basis for all their developmental needs.

We provide quality play opportunities that develop physical, social and intellectual skills through first-hand experience. For example:

  • Creativity is encouraged and expressed through drawing, painting, craftwork and music.
  • Early scientific concepts are learnt through playing with sand and water trays and taking part in simple cooking and planting experiments.
  • Children can express themselves and develop their imagination with a variety of pretend play e.g. activity home corner, dressing up, play shop, action rhyme and song.
  • Our outdoor play equipment (slides, rockers etc.) provides opportunities for physical development and co-ordination.
  • Construction toys, puzzles and craft introduce concepts of shape, size and colour as well as developing fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination.
  • Pre-reading and pre-writing activities are provided daily. A love of books provides the corner stone for children’s future learning, for this reason all the children have access to quality books which they are encouraged to ‘read’ and share with others.

We are registered and monitored by Ofsted and plan play activities and learning according to their criteria. We design our daily programme to implement flexible, child led play that allows children to develop, extend and discuss activities using their own imagination where appropriate.

Shenfield Day Nursery uses Tapestry, an online learning journal that is shared with parents so that they can see special moments and view their child’s progress. Tapestry can be accessed on a computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone where they can view their child’s activity during the day and add their own comments, photos and observations.

We provide opportunities to learn social independence. Children at our Nursery learn to play independently and with other children, developing social skills through companionship.

At meal times the children sit together around a table, developing early table manners and social interaction.

They learn about sharing and caring with other children, and are able to increase their communication, language and vocabulary by interacting with adults within the Nursery environment, thereby developing their confidence and self-esteem.

As well as occasional outings, our Nursery children are taken on walks to local shops, library etc. to increase social awareness (parents are consulted), which is reinforced through play opportunities such as pretend play, shop, road mats and railways.