We encourage learning through free play with a range of activities including:
Imaginative Play
The children learn to play together, to share, to use their imaginations and to expand their vocabulary. This type of play encourages children to express their feelings and engage in imaginary situations such as doctors and nurses and going to the post office. This is a safe secure environment where children feel supported in their play.
Books
The children learn to listen when a story is being read. Acting out or reading stories and describing incidents from their own experiences helps to develop their language. Story telling is an activity, which fosters the enjoyment of books, and can be a motivating factor in learning to read.
Music Activities
Studies have shown that music has a powerful effect on the intellectual and creative development of children and creative development of children to:
- Inspire right-brain, creative thinking
- Induce relaxation
- Improve concentration and memory
- Increase verbal emotional and spatial intelligence
The children enjoy singing songs, using percussion instruments and listening to a wide variety of music, from rhymes to classical and pop music. This helps to stimulate their awareness and enjoyment of music and gives them an opportunity to use music as a form of expression.
Creative Play
Children are introduced to activities such as Art and Craft, paint and play dough, sand and water play.
Sand and Water Play
Children have great fun, but they also develop manipulative and pre-math’s skills through exploring and experimenting. Many children can express their emotions and feelings when playing with sand and water as well as finding it a very relaxing and soothing activity.
Arts and Crafts
The children paint, draw, print, use scissors, glue and use clay. This allows the children to develop their creative and pre-writing skills. All this work gives the child a different medium to express their feelings, thoughts and emotions.
Play Dough
This is not just a fun activity for children; it can also help strengthen muscles in their hands and develop hand eye co-ordination. Once again this is an activity where the children’s imagination can be encouraged and developed. Play dough also allows the child to manipulate the material, which may relieve such emotions as anger/frustration.
Jigsaw, Construction and Manipulative Toys
In this area children’s pre-reading, pre-writing and hand eye co-ordination are developed. The development of reasoning and problem solving is also developed and encourages small motor movement.
Energetic Play
Organised energetic activities, such as running, jumping and skipping, will be a part of the Curriculum and encourages large motor movement. As well as aiding physical growth such activities can be a learning area and a great reliever of built up stress or tension.
Drama
Through drama the children learn self-expression and it instils an inner confidence within themselves. Children enjoy drama and it gives them the opportunity to experience the freedom to express their feelings and emotions in a free, comfortable and safe environment.
Cooking
All children like to cook, and we provide children with the opportunity to enjoy and learn this very important independent living skill in a relaxed and happy environment. Each week our children will bake and be our super chefs! All children have the equipment needed for baking and experience the fun themselves. The children also learn the importance of healthy eating.
Additional Needs: Children whose development, in one or more of the following areas, needs additional support - mobility, expressive and/or receptive communication, social behaviour, behavioural control, fine/gross motor skills, vision, hearing, self-care, cognitive skills.
Disability/Special Needs: Something that incapacitates, for example an intellectual, sensory, physical, social or emotional impairment.
Inclusion: The incorporation of children with additional needs into the crèche to ensure that they have equal opportunities to achieve their maximum potential