Welcome to Pips Pre-Nursery

GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENT The Government have announced that from April 2024, working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free childcare.  From September 2024, 15 hours of free childcare will be extended down to the age of nine months for working parents.  From September 2025, working parents of children aged nine months and upwards will be entitled to 30 hours free childcare per week right up to their child starting school. Frequently Asked Questions for Parents

Pips Lead Teaching Assistant - Miss Natalia Carrasco Gonzalvo

Pips Teaching Assistant - Mrs Joanna Scales

Pips Teaching Assistant - Mrs Sophie Wiggins

Here in our Pips classroom, we have a huge range of toys and resources to make your child’s time with us as fun and exciting as possible. We provide a variety of table top and floor based games, toys and activities that are easily accessible for the children to explore freely. In the classroom there is a lovely home corner dramatic play area, an arts and craft area, a small world play corner, an exploration tray and a calm corner- filled with books, fidget toys, teddies and alternative seating such as sofas, bean bags and cushions. We move our classroom around monthly, and rotate toys weekly to keep things exciting and to fit with our topics. Every week there are also planned activities within the 7 areas of learning in the EYFS. If you’d like more information on the Early Years curriculum for 2 year olds, please feel free to ask. 

In Pips room, we have a strong focus on communication and language skills. We work closely with our speech and language therapist Nicola, who provides us with lots tips and insight into helping your little ones learn to talk! Throughout the day we constantly model language, as well as using Makaton sign language to encourage communication and understanding skills. During our circle time sessions, we love to use our song spoon bucket to pick our favourite nursery rhymes to sing and sign! 

We are very lucky to have a brand new garden for Pips Pre-Nursery, which is filled with lots of amazing activities like monkey bars, balance beams and climbing equipment. These provide us with great ways to develop our gross motor skills! There is time outside every day in our garden where Pips children enjoy using bikes and scooters, explore the Wendy house and play ball games like kicking, throwing and catching. We also draw attention to the features of the natural world, grow plants together, and investigate the mini-beasts and animals we come across. We are able to use the other classes playgrounds from time to time, which gives children great opportunity to play with different outdoor toys. 

Throughout your child’s time with us in Pips, we provide the children with lots of opportunities to develop their fine motor skills. One way we do this is by having lots of mark making activities available for the children. We work one on one with each child weekly to have a name writing session, where they trace over their names and we have a chance to adjust hand grips. Each month we update our writing displays to see the progress the children are making. We also have fun activities using threading, stringing and tweezers to practice our hand control. Our exploration tray is changed weekly with different sensory items like sand, water, rice, pasta or gloop! 

Each day we enjoy group time activities- whether that’s an art activity, baking, crafting, ring games or circle time! These sessions provide us with lots of opportunities to practice effortful control, sharing and turn taking. It’s also a time for us to work together and create relationships. 

In Pips, we like to encourage the children to be as independent as possible, so we provide them with the skills and opportunities to do so. We involve the children with nearly every aspect of running the classroom, whether that’s pouring their drinks, setting the table for snack/lunch, rotating the toys, washing up art supplies, loading the dishwasher and even the planning. Each week we sit together as a class and decide which toys we want out the following week, and what kind of games and activities we want to do. We also help the children learn to dress themselves, wash and sanitizing their own hands and putting on their own shoes.  

Lots of children at pre-nursery age start to show signs of potty training. Here at pips we are here to help and support you and your child through this challenging change in their lives. We have all the facilities for nappy changing, potty training and toilet training. Everyone in Pips will either have Megs or Ms Tagg as a key person, who will be the one dealing with these care routines.  

Below is an example of our daily routine for our Pips room. However, we are extremely flexible and cater for children on a day to day basis, lots of our activities are child-led so may change throughout the day. We use a visual timetable to help the children understand our routine, and be able to count how many more steps before home time.  

8.45am  9.15am  9:45am  10:30am    11:15am    12pm  12:45pm  2pm  2:30pm  2:50pm  3pm

Greet children, wash hands, self-registration, Free play.  Tidy up, circle time  Wash hands, Snack time  Key children care routines, Group activity (art, play dough, topic), Free Play  Wash hands, Lunch time, Teeth Brushing  Sleep (if required), Outdoor play for children who don’t nap  Quiet Free Play, Key children care routines  Tidy up time, outdoor play  Key children care routines, story time  Wash hands, move to Library to continue stories  Home time