Extra-Curricular Activities

At our nursery, children over two years of age take part in a fun fitness session every day at around 9:00am, and younger children are invited to join in with the session if they wish to do so. This exciting five-minute session is part of our Nursery’s everyday routine and ensures children’s brains are engaged, and they are alert and ready to learn.

Research has shown that when children are carrying out cross-lateral movements, this encourages the two sides of the brain to communicate. In turn, this strengthens the nerve-cell pathways linking both sides of the brain, making it easier for children to learn and absorb information and skills from activities. Other benefits of exercise for children include, healthy heart and lungs, strengthening of muscles and bones, as well as providing relaxation and developing co-ordination.

The Wake Up and Shake Up songs which accompany these sessions, encourage health and well-being and link in with the Early Years Foundation Stage areas of learning, particularly Physical Development and Communication and Language – both prime areas of learning for young children.

Cooking in the early years is a great experience which offers a wealth of learning and development opportunities. Our nursery carries out cooking with the children once a week, using specialist equipment for small hands. This ensures the children can be independent at their own cooking station.

The cooking activities offer cross-curricular learning which cover all seven areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and because children enjoy the experience so much, they are not even aware they are learning new skills. Our cooking activities are a sensory experience, often involving all five senses, which makes it a more memorable and truly engaging experience. Cooking also gives children knowledge about food, where it comes from and what is healthy and unhealthy. Children will develop their skills around good food choices.

The cooking activities offer cross-curricular learning which cover all seven areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and because children enjoy the experience so much, they are not even aware they are learning new skills. Our cooking activities are a sensory experience, often involving all five senses, which makes it a more memorable and truly engaging experience. Cooking also gives children knowledge about food, where it comes from and what is healthy and unhealthy. Children will develop their skills around good food choices.

Regular cookery sessions at our nursery also gives children invaluable self-help skills, and of course means cooking a range of delicious recipes which can be shared with parents at home.

At our nursery, we believe that preparing children mentally for the challenges that life may bring, is just as important as preparing them intellectually and physically.  In our ever-changing world, one third of children within nurseries today will go on to jobs that currently do not exist. To ensure they are as prepared for this as possible, it is vital that children’s Personal, Social and Emotional Development is at the forefront of everything we do. Making relationships, being able to regulate behaviour and understanding how to manage their feelings are key skills that children must learn to be successful in their later lives. With this in mind, our nursery has a dedicated area where children are able to develop these skills.

Feelings

Starting with our youngest children; the ‘Feelings Bag’ is filled with resources that allow them to begin to acknowledge different types of feelings, such as happy, sad, shy, excited and angry. Practitioners use tools and resources, supported by detailed activity cards, to introduce these feelings to the children and also to demonstrate different ways in which they can be supported or ‘made to feel better’. This provides children with the initial understanding of how someone might make them feel happy and excited, or supported when they feel sad or shy.

Emotions

As the children develop their understanding of feelings, the emotional aspect is added into our learning experience. This is achieved by helping children take their understanding of different feelings, and begin to look at how they may affect others. Activities such as using an animal puppet to simulate body language which represents how a child might be feeling, and supporting the children in their language and behaviours, are key ways that practitioners help children secure an understanding of emotional patterns and the impact of the actions of others.

At our nursery, Family Boxes are created to enable young babies to connect with photographs of people or objects that are special to them. Research suggests that young babies focus best on high-contrast tones of black, white and red, which is why in our Baby Room, we have created an area using only these high contrast tones, to stimulate our young babies’ minds. We ask our parents or carers to provide photographs which are mounted onto objects that can be manipulated by the baby’s small hands. A sound object will also be placed inside. This offers babies, not only sight recognition, but also sound, enabling them to connect with the item using three of their senses. Young babies will reach out and touch their own object to explore it further. 

The Family Boxes are kept at the baby’s height in the contrast area, allowing them to be explored by the baby when they are mobile. If a baby is not yet mobile, they will explore and discover their Family Box with their Key Person.

Our older children are encouraged to construct and make their own ‘Chatter Box’ at home by collecting a few of their favourite items and placing them in a shoe box or something similar in shape and size. The box is decorated at home with the parent or carer and then brought into the nursery.

In small groups, with their Key Person, children are encouraged to share the contents of their ‘Chatter Box’ with their peers. This activity is always undertaken in small groups to allow each child in the group a turn to discuss a few of their items. All children will be given the chance to ask questions and participate in conversations within the group.

Taking part in ‘Chatter Box’ time will encourages children to listen to their peers which helps develop their attention and concentration skills. The vocabulary a child uses when describing their special items will extend to reflect the breadth of their experiences. This activity also enables children to organise, sequence and clarify their thinking, ideas, feelings and events. Children will be encouraged to express themselves, whilst showing awareness of the group’s listeners and needs, whilst using past, present and future forms of language.

Outdoor play is an essential requirement for children of all ages, but it shouldn’t focus purely on running, jumping and riding bikes. The natural world is the perfect place to enhance children’s curiosity, critical thinking and communication and language development.

Our Weather Boxes have been specifically designed for all age ranges to provide additional learning and development opportunities outside of the classroom environment. From story times and mark making, to mobile mud kitchens and science and investigation, these boxes have it all.

The boxes have been dynamically designed to provide everything our practitioners need to effectively carry out the activities contained within the box. Children are given the free choice as they enter the garden or head out for their walk, to choose which, if any boxes, they would like to access. Each adult-led activity using a Weather Box provides cross-curricular learning for children of all ages and covers the breadth of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum.

Outside of the Early Years Outcomes, our children learn the importance of looking after the environment around them. They are  encouraged and effectively supported in playing and exploring, actively learning, and questioning ‘the norm’ with their skills of creativity and critical thinking. This is all achieved through the use of a Weather Box and the interaction and teaching from our practitioners.

Independence is an essential life skill and one that needs to be nurtured from an early age. Being independent at our nursery involves ‘Mr Germ’, a puppet that is used to interact with the children to encourage the responsibility and ownership of their own space. The drive for independence starts from babyhood, with young babies rapidly making decisions about what they play with, what they like to eat, and who they prefer to be with. Toddlers will thrive in a healthy environment where they have opportunities to do more and more for themselves. Likewise, our older children are encouraged to become independent learners and to make decisions about what they are doing, and where and with whom. This encourages competence and responsible autonomy.

Mr Germ supports and encourages our older children to think for themselves, and gives them the confidence to prove themselves very capable in this area. Cleaning equipment designed for small hands is provided, enabling children to make choices and decisions about when they feel their environment requires cleaning or tidying.

Our Pre-School Young Investigators Group is perfect for inspiring little minds, and gives our children the opportunity to participate in two science experiments each week. Science offers so many areas of learning but mostly falls under the ‘Understanding the World’ area of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage. This cross-curricular subject also enables young minds to embrace other categories of the curriculum. Science enables children to be explorers in the world around them. It involves questioning, experimenting, testing, analysing and developing ideas (critical thinking). Our children will be involved in exploring a wide range of new vocabulary when engaged in a science activity or experiment.

Our Young Investigators Group gives children a solid foundation for their knowledge and understanding of science, which they will later build upon when moving on to primary school. The group focuses on developing children’s skills in observation, prediction, critical thinking and discussion, when reviewing the data. Concepts of number, size and position, developing motor skills, expressing themselves and building relationships and self-esteem will be involved.

Children today, have an ever-growing curiosity about the outside world, where foods come from and how they grow. Garden Champions is our own bespoke extra-curricular gardening activity. This activity extends children’s knowledge of the outdoor environment, habitats, caring for living things, growth cycles and growing vegetation outdoors. Our Garden Champion activities are an effective method of harnessing our children’s curiosity in this area and shaping their understanding of the world around them. 

Our nursery has a nominated ‘Garden Champion’ who attends regular training sessions to further develop their own knowledge and skills, enabling them to bring back to nursery, a range of seasonal activities which can be carried out with the children. This is not simply an activity of planting grass seeds in a pot, but is in fact an opportunity for children to make use of real-life gardening tools and equipment to prepare an area, sow seeds, tend to vegetation and harvest their produce at the end of the process. The use of these tools further extends the children’s knowledge and understanding of how to manage their own risk, handle tools carefully, and keep themselves safe in an outdoor environment. Our children always complete their own visual risk assessment of the area, with the support of a practitioner, and decide for themselves if it is an appropriate and safe time to complete their activity. If the children decide it is not, they will then discuss what can be done to make it so.

Introducing growing to young children encourages them to expand their knowledge on where and how food arrives on their plate.  Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture, which is the growing of plants in a soil-less environment.  Hydroponic growing uses mineral nutrient solutions to feed plants in water, without soil.

The HydroVeg Kit system uses the Nutrient Technique.  This is where a constant flow of the mineral solution is pumped from a reservoir into the growing tubes.  The growing tubes require no growing medium.  The roots draw up the nutrients from the flowing solution.  The downward flow pours back into the reservoir to be recycled.  The plants get oxygen, water and nutrients for healthy growth.

The growing of fruit and vegetables in this kit has the added advantage that children can use all of their senses to support their learning.  Children will be able to understand that kale, tomatoes or herbs come from plants, but these grow so quickly that children’s interest will be maintained throughout.

On a daily basis, the children will explore and investigate the plants and record their progress using many areas of learning.  They will think critically about the needs of plants to establish what is required, extending their language and knowledge throughout.

The Seamless Transition to School Programme incorporates elements of formal learning into each child’s day, ensuring a smooth transition to school when the time comes. In keeping with local nursery schools and reception classes, the activity sessions will be based on a termly theme, each covering all aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, but with a greater focus on children’s literacy and mathematics skills. The programme has an all-inclusive approach to learning with engaging, structured activities developed to provide children with the skills they need as they approach their move on to school. The programme will also make use of the chosen phonics programme by the schools in the local area, to ensure the children are used to the system and how it works. Sessions take place daily, and will usually be during the Local Authority’s term times. Each session is led by a highly experienced curriculum lead. Each half term they will share the plans with parents and carers, in advance, along with activities and opportunities that they can utilise at home to further the children’s learning and development. As part of the programme, children will take part in activities that support early writing. However, it is important to recognise that not all children develop at the same rate and as such, a fundamental pre-cursor to writing is well developed fine motor skills. This means that there may be some activities that are not immediately recognised as ‘writing’, but that do provide these important pre-writing skills.

The purpose of this project is to promote intergenerational learning and create new possibilities for older adults and young children to learn together and benefit from each other’s interactions. For many families, older adults and younger children are having less and less contact with each other due to working life or travelling distance. The relationship and bond that forms between the elderly and the young is amazing. Children visit a care home on a regular basis to cement the relationship and enable memory skills to be recalled.

Children learn important life lessons – what better way than to learn from wise elderly people who have lived a long and interesting life? The elderly have learned many valuable lessons and sharing their stories with the children is magical. If the children are having fun and learning with the elderly residents, then their respect for each other will grow naturally. Key persons aid the interaction at the elderly care home with close supervision ensuring neither age group is vulnerable to any risk of fall or over stretching themselves.