Thank you for considering our Preschool for your child
West Wycombe Preschool prides itself in offering a nurturing, fun and educational setting for children to learn and thrive in
Learning & fun
When a place is offered to a family, a home visit is suggested before the child starts at pre-school. These informal visits, over a cup of tea offer an opportunity for the child to meet with their key worker at home where they feel safe & secure & begin to build a bond. This is also the perfect opportunity to talk through your child’s likes & dislikes, share any concerns you have & start to create a picture of how to build on your child’s knowledge.
Our settling in process is flexible, some children needing little support, others needing a more gentle approach over a two week period. Once settled, we will work out next steps for your child to extend their knowledge & expand their interests. These will be shared with parents & can be worked on at home too. They will be totally tailored to your child & may consist of things such as: toilet training, listening to a 2 part instruction, recognising a range of shapes, counting beyond 10 & further, using scissors with 1 hand, forming letters. The list is endless. Our experienced team will pull on their years of knowledge to give your child the best start at preschool.
We follow the EYFS curriculum & this covers 7 areas of learning which ensure the care & teaching we deliver reaches the child as a whole, including their personal & emotional development. We look at the characteristics that help to build an inquisitive child who is interested to find out & not afraid to have a go at a challenge.
The children are offered free flow around the setting, supervised when using the stairs & always accompanied outside. We provide puddle suits for wet weather & continue the curriculum outside too.
Expert teaching:
Managed by Jo, who holds a BA Hons degree, the team are experts in this field. They recognise each child as an individual & respect family beliefs, celebrate the differences & encourage the attitude of having a go, whether that be opening a packet in their lunch box, holding scissors for the first time or climbing on a frame in the garden. The teams love of children drives them forward, extending their own knowledge, keeping on top of new initiatives & delivering the best care & education for the children
Each child is encouraged to reach their full potential, some move on to school being able to read four letter words & sound out & write legible words, others are achieving their goals of holding a pencil & climbing the stairs unaided. No goal is too small & each achievement is celebrated. The staff team hold all hold mandatory training but also access further training to support their own personal development. These are cascaded to the team in regular staff meetings to ensure the team are as strong as possible. We are involved in initiatives from Bucks County Council & work closely with a range of outside agencies ranging from children’s centres, speech & language therapists, educational psychologists & other local childcare providers & schools that our children move to.
When new guidance is published from government, Ofsted or Bucks County Council, these are fed into our robust policies & form part of our everyday practice.
Our Passionate and Caring Staff
Learning & Fun
We follow the EYFS curriculum & this covers 7 areas of learning which ensure the care & teaching we deliver reaches the child as a whole, including their personal & emotional development. We look at the characteristics that help to build an inquisitive child who is interested to find out & not afraid to have a go at a challenge
Lunch Club
A healthy lunch box is bought into preschool from home. The children are seated across 2 upstairs rooms, all with a member of staff who sits & eats with them. This is a quiet time for eating & conversations around the table, similar to those at home. The children are encouraged to open their own packets, in readiness for school, although we are always on hand to assist.
Expert Teachers
Managed by Jo, the team are experts in this field. They recognise each child as an individual & respect family beliefs, celebrate the differences & encourage the attitude of having a go, whether that be opening a packet in their lunch box, or climbing on a frame in the garden. The teams love of children drives them forward, extending their own knowledge, keeping on top of new initiatives & delivering the best care & education for the children
Our Setting
Our Preschool is set over two levels. Our children love exploring our setting. With great resources and lessons in each room. Our multi-level garden is soon to be expanded and improved with lots of new resources and climbing equipment.
Red Room
In this room we set up activities which will really spark the children's imagination and sense of role play.
We often have a home corner and dressing up but other scenarios include a shop, dentist, vets, doctors, builder’s yard, hairdressers and many more. We follow the children’s interests and live to create environments which they will be engaged in.
There is also toys for self-selection in this room and the downstairs bathroom is easy for them to access independently.
Yellow Room
This is the first room the children will come in to each session to put their belongings away. We also have a board on the wall where their name card will be displayed and we ask them to find their name each day as a way of doing self-registration and simple phonic recognition. The children also have their own tray in this room which they will become used to emptying independently each day.
In this room we have a cosy reading area, puzzles and mark making resources but the bulk of our play in this room is down on the floor. As the children interests change and evolve we bring out different resources to enhance their learning and have lots of fun.
Green Room
This is our room where a lot of creativity happens! Children can access paints, clay, gluing, playdough and many more fun activities. Our free standing art trolley has a mass of activities for the children to self-select from pencils, paper and envelopes to chalks, stencils, rulers and magazines for cutting and gluing.
This is also the room where we have our cookery sessions. Each half term we choose a recipe which is relevant to the children's learning such as spicy pakoras around Eid or heart cookies for Valentine’s Day. We encourage lots of skills such as cutting, spreading, grating, weighing and even cracking our own eggs. The children cook in small groups several times through the half term so they can keep practising these great skills.
Blue Room
In this room we have our pet fish called Chase, Marshal, Sky, Rocky and Rubble. We also have a huge range of resources which encourage construction and investigation along with puzzles, board games and matching games. This area is often used for floor as well as table top activities. Our map of the world on the wall is used for identifying countries that our friend’s families come from and places which families go to on holiday. This prompts lots of natural investigation about different countries and cultures which the children love to absorb themselves in to. Our pre-school tablet and resource books also help to strengthen the children's understanding of a range of non-fiction themes such as space, our bodies, nature, simple science, dinosaurs, what are germs and many more interesting facts!
Kitchen
In our small but compact kitchen we enjoy the children's cafe! Cafe is the name the children call snack time which takes place between 9:30am-11am. We encourage the children to independently come to cafe after washing their hands. They register themselves by taking their name card off the board and placing it in the box. This helps with their early phonic recognition in a way which is fun. We offer a range of seasonal fruits and vegetables for the children to try from carrot sticks, peppers, satsumas, apples, pears, grapes, melon, and sugar snap peas along with cheese cubes, hummus, wholemeal pittas, toast, crackers, bread sticks and multigrain hoops. We offer cow’s milk or water to drink. Building children's independence skills is a huge part of cafe with children learning how to pour their own drinks from a small jug, spread their own butter on a cracker, cut their own fruit with a knife and peel their own bananas. Cafe is a small group activity with 4 children and one adult which enables us to have some wonderful conversations with the children about where in the world our food comes from, how it grows and what benefit it has on our bodies’ health. Something as simple as snack time is a great way for us to put in some learning without the children knowing!
Garden
Our wonderful garden is set out over two levels and has lots of different areas for play and learning. On our courtyard the children grow their own vegetables such as peas, tomatoes and courgettes. Down in the main area of our garden we have a play house, track for bikes and scooters and a built in sand area. In our outside store we have a huge amount of resources for extending the children’s learning from large climbing frames and slides to stilts and hula hoops. We enjoy playing games such as ‘what’s the time Mr Wolf’ and ‘duck, duck, goose’ to help the children learn to take turns and listen to their friends. We like to be outside in all weathers and enjoy exploring our local village as often as possible.