Enviroment

Our rooms are set up daily according to the children attending that day. Key people are responsible for ensuring the activities and toys are age and developmentally appropriate for the individual child and that they are stimulating, challenging and yet achievable for the children. The rooms are set up in away that all children can access the toys; they are displayed in a way that is inviting for the children. We offer vibrant book corners in all our rooms that offer high quality books, puppets and also puzzles. Our book corner is a quiet area where children can relax and also communicate with peers and practitioners in a quieter and calmer environment. We have role play areas which are changed to meet children’s current interests and also specific needs, for example a child who is nervous about starting school may require a role play area set up as a class room to help role play the new experiences.

Our children have the opportunity to access outdoor play facilities via all of our lower rooms with open access to the outside from these rooms. The babies benefit from a smaller separate outdoor space with artificial grass and lots of treasure baskets and exploratory boxes. The toddlers enjoy opportunities to explore messy play experiences in their outdoor space such as sand, water, mud, rice, spaghetti and other sensory activities. These are also bought inside when weather is restrictive on outdoor activities. Preschools have opportunity to explore our large play areas, with large grassed areas for ball games and other physical activities. Children enjoy the wonders of nature planting vegetables and flower in our vege patches.

We are committed to offering our children a valuable learning experience which will benefit all of their areas of learning. We feel children learn in a holistic environment and their learning cannot be categorised into sections. Therefore, we use our environment to provide a range of toys and experiences that can create a holistic learning experience. We fully understand the importance of offering our children activities that stimulate their interests, however we also believe children should have the opportunity to experience some adult–led experiences, such as stories, puppet shows, number games, music and movement sessions plus the opportunity to explore technology, create number lines and early mark making experiences (and for older children early writing activities). These experiences allow our children to develop skills in areas they may not know they are interested in.

We use resources that are age appropriate and also developmentally appropriate, meaning our observations are key in planning our learning environment for the children. However, our planning for toys and play areas is also enriched by our children. In the pre–school room, children contribute by mind-mapping their ideas for their role play areas, also for their displays in their rooms. The children’s views are respected and valued. We use the mind-maps weekly to decide on our weekly interests and themes. The toddler room and baby room’s resources are all accessible to the children and enables them to choose from a range which have been previously selected to suit the children’s individual needs and development.

At Daisychain we enjoy being out and about amongst our community. We make frequent visits to the local parks, activity and places of interest and attending events, plays and shows throughout the year/

We believe in offering access to outside environments where our children can learn about their world and what is around them. The nursery children enjoy walks around our village and local parks. We are currently developing our forest school activities for our three and four-year-old, enjoying having the countryside at our doorstep which allows us to have space to explore in a supervised and controlled environment.