Our Classes

Seedlings (0 – 2 years)

The Seedling’s room is where children’s growth at Valley Hill begins. The focus is on offering babies a stimulating sensory curriculum developing their sense of:

Sight:

Babies use visual aids such as black and white, bright, shiny and dull objects. They are taken on walk’s into the woodland area and local community and explore natural objects both indoors and out.

Hearing:

Babies early listening skills are developed through listening to music, instruments, voices and sounds in the environment.

Touch:

Babies are rocked, swayed and cuddled to stimulate and soothe. Positive touch (similar to baby massage) is used to calm, reassure and to support learning. Through messy play, babies are free to explore a variety of textures with all of their bodies.

Smell:

Smells used in the baby room are all-natural and found in the environment. During our forest walks babies experience smells such as pine cones and lavender, the smell of cut grass or the first rain after a dry period.

Taste:

Tasting usually happens at mealtimes, depending on the babies weaning stage. Staff will offer a variety of new foods (which also encompasses new smells) such new fruits to taste at snack time.

Kinaesthetic:

Babies are encouraged to develop an awareness of their own movement. Young babies can spend a little time playing on their tummies, helping their bodies and brains to make fantastic neurological connections. Babies are given time and space to explore their very own movement pattern, as they curl and uncurl, stretch their heads and hips, reach one-half of their bodies to reach and grasp.

Saplings (2 – 3 years)

There are lots of activities and resources available for the children and they spend the first few months in the saplings room learning how to access and play with this whole new world.

Children can build with the various construction equipment available, create a story in the small world or role play area. Dig and splash in the sand and water trays, get making in the creative area or laze back and enjoy a book in the book area.

The children share their play-space with their friends in the pre-school and so have older role models and the adults as their play partners. The adults join the children in their play to model and teach.

Willow (3 – 4 years)

The Willow room is where staff start to prepare children with the skills that they will need for entering school the following academic year. Children are encouraged to become independent learners, building on the skill that they developed while in the Saplings rooms. There are many defined areas within the room which are developed around the children’s interests in order to support their learning. Our role-play for example has been a doctor’s surgery, a post office, a supermarket etc.

The children freely access a creative workshop, set up with lots of interesting objects such as pot’s and spool’s, twigs and roll, glue, glue sick’s, sticky tape, scissors and paint. The children are free to enter and get making! Children can explore their inner Picasso at the easel where they are free to choose their, colours and paper.

The children explore the sand and water filling containers and building with sand of different consistencies, developing mathematical language and scientific understanding through their play.

Children develop early reading and writing skills through early phonics which is taught through song, dance and large movement. They mark make using ribbons and scarves in the air, their fingers in shaving foam, builders paintbrushes in water buckets and much much more.

Our budding engineers explore designing and building structures using a variety of construction materials in the construction area.

The cosy book area is used for our growing book worms who like to snuggle down for a quiet story or where they listen to an adult dramatize a version of a children’s tale.

Children develop their storytelling skills in the small world where they use car’s, train’s, a castle and much more, to create their own stories.