Babies
Our baby room welcomes children from 3 months to 17/18 months and offers a warm friendly environment for them to make the transition from home to nursery care. Our Baby room is situated on the ground floor, for easy access and comfortable transition to our outside areas. We recognise that finding the right environment for your baby can be a very difficult decision to make for families. Understanding this ensures that we not only provide a fantastic area for your baby to access, but also ensuring we have exceptional staff working with us. Our baby room is set over two interconnecting, large open plan rooms, one of which is our conservatory area which is a fabulous light environment for our meal times and lots of messy/malleable play. Our Baby room is filled with exciting and stimulating learning opportunities. Our baby room is small and homely, enabling us to pay particular attention to their individual needs at such a young age, we also have a separate adjoined sleep room for our babies so they can be closely monitored, but can sleep soundly away from other exploring babies.
The babies will also have daily access to our outdoor provision where they can further explore, experiment and play. The babies have the opportunity to engage in lots of play and activities that will encourage their all-round development.
Meal times can be flexible for our youngest babies, when they are ready, we make meal times a social event where our babies can begin to eat together. We can undertake meal times with as much or as little support as you are looking for i.e with baby led weaning. Of course there will always be a high level of praise and encouragement at meal times, providing relaxed time to explore and experiment with different textures and tastes.
They are nurtured throughout their time in the baby room with us, offering all the encouragement and support they need to grow into confident, enthused toddlers. We also enjoy lots of sensory play within the baby room, spending time exploring natural objects in treasure baskets which are home made at Puddleducks as well as lots of messy and textural play and activities.
Although our babies have the opportunity to explore all colours, we do have areas within our Baby room that are specifically black and white. As babies grow and develop they respond best to bold, contrasting geometric shapes. It is therefore important to provide babies with lots of opportunities to experience resources that feature these visual extremes and particularly geometric images. Babies find these images more interesting than similar multi coloured ones and will be more likely to engage in the experience for longer periods of time. Visual development is stimulated as well as physical development – like, kicking, and reaching and grasping objects.
Although there is varying evidence about which colours baby can see, there is wide agreement that babies first see white, black, and shades of grey. Having these black and white images available to the children daily helps our babies to help increase concentration skills, stimulate brain cell connections (using both left and right side of brain) and increase their attention span. Providing these opportunities will enhance each babies curiosity which will lead to Increased sense of self belonging, Increased confidence, and also develop their own Creativity and self-expression.
Toddlers
Our Toddler room ranges from 17 months to three years (approximate age range based on individual children) and is also located on our ground floor within three open planned rooms.
Having an approximate age guideline gives us the opportunity to ensure this is flexible and really related to individual children and their readiness to transition to the next room. Some toddlers may join us at 15 months, others may benefit from spending another couple of months in our baby room.
In the Toddler room our aim is for our children to continue developing and flourish through play, exploration and captivation of exciting opportunities. Our Toddler area is set out so we can really enable our toddlers to engage in free play, as well as providing adult led and planned activities which are based around individual children’s interests. Our carefully selected team easily adapt activities on offer to suit different abilities as well as explore different strands of interests.
Our toddlers are introduced to circle time and your child will enjoy a self-chosen choice of activities including role play, music and movement, sand and water, outdoor play and arts and craft activities. Our Toddlers are at such an important age that their inspiration for learning and exploration of new found ideas must be captured, nurtured and enhanced.
Meal times are a social occasion where our toddlers come together to eat, providing a fantastic opportunity to develop social skills, experiment and try new, exciting food tastes. Our set up allows older toddlers and staff to be positive role models, staff eat with the children and are on hand to assist children who may need help as well as encouraging our older toddlers to be independent within a relaxed, supportive environment.
Our Toddlers have regular, daily access to our outdoor provision enabling us to provide a continuation of our indoor environment outside. Our outdoor provision is stimulating and exhilarating; it enables our Toddlers to begin a thought provoking journey of exploration within a safe and supportive environment. The outdoors provides a fascinating, natural base for each child to absorb the world around them using all their 5 senses.
Pre-School
Our Pre-schoolers have the entire 1st Floor devoted to their preschool rooms at Puddleducks. Our pre-schoolers join us at around 3 years of age; again this is individual to each child’s needs. Our Preschool room is a learning enriched environment which provides extra challenge and independence, although still learning through play based activities.
The children can access a variety of activities freely such as role play, music and movement, sand and water, construction, arts and craft, ICT and opportunities both indoors and out that will allow and promote each child to encounter positive, motivating learning experiences across all areas of their learning and development. Our pre-school allows children to still be children; they can play, explore and have an unlimited amount of time, attention and encouragement from adults; however we do this in such a way that ensures their social interactions, individual self-belief and confidence is at the fore front of their time with us.
We take pride in seeing our Pre-Schoolers leave us for a new exciting start in school, leaving us as resilient, self-sufficient and competent active learners. Independence is important to our Pre-Schoolers; we promote this through fun, laughter, a sense of belonging and positive responsibility. Ultimately this leaves our Pre-Schoolers feeling proud, delighted and captivated in their new found confidence.
Independence will be promoted throughout the day, meal times give us a fantastic opportunity to allow each child to serve their own meals, and help to tidy away, of course support will always be on hand and staff join in this social time with the children joining them for lunch daily.
Our pre-schoolers have regular, daily access to our outdoor provision enabling us to provide a continuation of our indoor environment outside. Our outdoor provision is stimulating and exhilarating; it enables our pre-schoolers to begin a thought provoking journey of exploration, extended imaginative journeys all in a safe environment. The use of the outdoors is paramount for any child; however for our pre-schoolers we ensure the continuation of opportunities, and learning as well as play promotes each child’s independence and self-confidence; this enabling our older children to access their own risk and gain knowledge of the outside world and of course being role models to our younger explorers.
The Beach school/Outings experience is embedded in our pre-schoolers learning experiences, promoting all-round developmental opportunities. Whether we are building shelters, exploring the tides, visiting our local library, getting stuck in to an activity morning at the children and family centre or just getting to know our natural environment outings are always exciting and forever changing, as well as providing teachable moments that we would not normally come across in the normal nursery environment.
The experiences our pre-schoolers can get from our daily activities are vast, and continuously build on everything we will do within nursery life. The children will get to have first-hand experiences, work together as a team, have their own ideas, opinions and most importantly to have a go and try something new.