We have a wonderful purpose built setting, which comprises of 3 main rooms inside with great cloakroom space, children’s toilets, a disabled toilet and our own kitchen for preparing snacks. We have a base for each of our groups – star room, sun room and moon room. These groups enjoy a circle time together full of chat, exploration, new ideas, listening and attention games as well as some learning based on the EYFS areas. You keep up to date with what our three groups have been up to on our blog.
We plan our circles daily and they are really individual throughout the week to support all of the children in each group. The group leaders do a wonderful job of teaching and playing to help children progress and learn the skills they need for school. We then enjoy snacks together and move into a totally free flow session. During our free flow lots of the children’s favourite toys are available, we also plan specific activities to engage and inspire them to get involved. The green table area is often set up for craft that relates to a theme or a role play set up we have. Examples include making a duck pond, a fairy land, science week, exploring technology, using the ipad and non fiction books to learn about our interests, we cook, make smoothies, melt ice, fill balloons, make rockets, elephants, cards, letters to home – the list is endless!
The blue room offers role play during free flow and has been a doctors surgery, a hospital, a baby weigh in clinic, a Chinese restaurant, a wedding venue, a festival venue, a theatre, a hairdressers and we have built whole worlds on the floor following children’s interests!
The red room is often used for small group work in free flow time, a time to nurture some of the children, a time to relax and play a game in a quieter setting, a place for some speech and language practice and sometimes we have a big soft play area set up if the rain arrives to ruin our outside fun! This is managed carefully with small groups, no shoes and a huge blackboard timetable of who is waiting for a turn and who is next in line. Great turn taking skills and listening to rules and friends and always some brilliant leaping, crawling, jumping and climbing.
We work hard in our planning to offer exciting opportunities for the children here, things to explore, to play, to learn, to think, to express themselves and to learn to make friends! We listen carefully to what the children are interested in and we organise our equipment and resources to make sure the children never get bored of the same toys. Each week in our free flow before circle we have a different focus such as understanding the world or literacy or shapes or numbers or communication – all the time building up confidence in our children.