Our Learning Environments

Stimulating Environments

The "environments" or "spaces" we create for our children at Chanctonbury are carefully thought out each day because we know that the environment in which our children play massively helps to support and extend our children's development and learning.

Therefore, every day we review and adapt:

Our Indoor spaces including Busy Bee Room

Our Outdoor spaces

and

Our Emotional environment

Read on for more detail...

Our Emotional Environment

Children learn when they play...

Children play when they are happy and relaxed...

Children are happy when they feel "at home", loved and safe...

This is what we do at Chanctonbury Preschool - everything we do is to make each unique child feel valued, loved, safe.

Their home away from home.

Outdoors and Free Flow

"Children gain enormous benefit from learning outside"

source: www.earlyyearsmatters.co.uk

At Chanctonbury Preschool we have a large, spacious outside area.

The children "free flow" so they can decide to play outside or inside - with staff to support them in both areas

Our outside space allows the children to run and ride and climb and jump in puddles and experience nature in all its glory!

Outdoors "a child's use of language is 5 times greater than indoors"

source: www.earlyyearsmatters.co.uk

Our Garden

Our Big Bright Hall

We have a bright, light spacious hall in which we are able to offer our children lots of different activities including "small world" toys, construction blocks, lego etc, make believe and dressing up, art and craft, science and discovery. All resources are always available to the children to support them in whatever direction their curiosity takes them.

We have a cosy quiet corner for the children to sit in and chill and /or engage with a book either by themselves or with a member of staff.

Our Busy Bee Room

In the September / January before your child goes up to Big School, we support them to move to the Busy Bee Room for a short period at the start of the day. Here we gently support the children to develop their school readiness by encouraging their sense of independence and enable them to work together cooperatively with both their friends and adult helpers.

We are able to do small group work such as turn taking games, listening games and activities which allow older children to explore topics in more depth, developing their natural inquisitiveness and also maths and literacy activities that the younger children are not always ready for.

At Chanctonbury Preschool we are led by the children when we plan our activities but we use the opportunity to consider events that are going on in our world and let the children explore them how they wish. For example, if we have cold weather we may make some ice and see how it feels. Or we might go and make footprints in the frost and watch it melt.

The Busy Bees still take part in the activities in the main hall with their younger friends