At this age we reduce the daily feedback to a few essentials and anything of particular importance. Most children are keen to speak about their day with their parents at this age. We provide termly review meetings with your key worker and invite you to contribute to your child's developmental record at least twice each term.
 
We follow the nursery routine as outlined below, by the time that children move into this room, most of them no longer nap at nursery, and the routine reflects this. If they need to sleep after lunch they join in with the younger children for this.
 
The Pre-Schoolers continue to be well supported by repetition and routine. Just as we do with our younger children we focus on group activities that support children to learn to share, take turns, listen and wait, with lots of adult support for managing disagreements over stuff and space. Larger groups and longer periods for focus are also explored as children become able to manage these.
 
Key workers support Pre-Schoolers to manage independently in their peer group using their communication skills in social situations to keep the play flowing with their friends, cooperate around problem solving and have fun together. Like the 2 year olds some Pre-Schoolers explore the effects that they can have on those around them by pushing at boundaries and so the adults help them to negotiate these emotional times. We continue to use small circle times to talk about feelings, what makes us sad or happy or angry and to try to think how our actions can make others feel.
 

We support these older children to speak about their interests and to think about how these could be developed at nursery with us. This might be through reading and researching together, making things or carrying out science experiments, or going to look at things in the real world. In this way, we try to see if we can firstly develop plans from children's interests. If a child is interested in dinosaurs this might be supported by reading up about dinosaur facts, role play with dinosaurs to support imagination and creativity, making environments or props together for dinosaur play. Using writing skills / mark making to record what we see or learn. Making dinosaur foot prints or exploring fossils. Along the way we might talk about relative size of dinosaurs, measuring and counting them and learn about their habitats, food preferences and skeletons. As you can see, one area of interest can be developed to provide learning across the 7 areas of the EYFS.
 

Alongside the children's own areas of interest we look to stimulate their interest in the world outside, with daily walks in our local park and community, looking at the roles of people in our community, the local library, shops, post office, travel agents, bank, Fire, Police station, Opticians and Doctor's Surgery. We sometimes visit the local Mosque or Church, Cemetery and ask children to see if they can guide the group to their own home. We look at maps and make maps.

Children's mark making and early writing is encouraged in all areas of the curriculum and children start to sound out letters using phonics as a way to segment words to be able to spell them and blend them to be able to read them. We move at the child's pace spreading out from the personally significant letters and sounds to more systematic filling in of the gaps. We encourage the children's in reading and writing to flow from their interest in adults reading and writing, the words within the environment and the link between familiar stories in picture books with the accompanying words to unpick together. We use small group games and activities to support this.
 
Maths is also woven through the curriculum with opportunities to extend mathematical understanding, start to connect numerals with quantities and some children will begin to write them.
 
A creative workshop is supplied with objects to use in junk modelling, making pictures with; crayons, pencils, chalk and paint, plus glue and interesting bits and bobs for sticking. Children are supported to learn how to use scissors and how to stay safe with these. We also introduce sewing and finer beads and threading to this group. The fine motor and construction sets become more complex requiring greater control, strength and accuracy, gears, small Lego and small puzzle pieces for example.

Science is explored in adult led focus activities and has included making exploding volcanoes and other mixture experiments, exploring light, sound, friction, pulleys, what plants need to grow, life cycles of butterflies, frogs and plants.

There is time outside every day in our garden. Pre School children enjoy using the tricycles and scooters, they start to play ball games, kicking, throwing and catching, small circle games, chasing and catching. They often take their role play with their peers outside, organising increasingly complex scenarios, frequently Super heroes, Pirates, Baddies and Police, or Princesses and Princes. They take turns and need very little adult support in organising the flow of play and negotiating the roles.

We also draw attention to the features of the natural world, grow plants together and investigate the mini-beasts and animals that we come across. We provide, sand, water, mud play and other types of sensory play. There are large blocks to build with, platforms to climb on and develop gross motor skills.

Pre School children, like all children at minihome are observed by their key worker and others to plan and provide for their developmental needs. We also assess their development to ensure that any developmental issues are picked up on and appropriate action taken to support you and your child to access additional help if needed.

daily routine

We follow the nursery routine as outlined below, by the time that children move into this room, most of them do not nap at nursery, and the routine reflects this. If they do need a nap then they join in with 2 year old children who sleep.