Hi! I'm Mr. Brown Bear and I care for Preschool. 

In Preschool our focus will be largely on school readiness and increasing children’s knowledge and understanding of the world around them. 

We will be developing children’s phonic awareness by following the Jolly Phonics programme of study. We have found this to be a hugely effective and fun way of introducing children to phonics and a scheme that a lot of schools use, including many of our feeder schools. We will also be supporting our children in their emergent writing by providing lots of opportunities for children to engage in purposeful free writing indoors and out including writing lists, letters, recipes, receipts, tickets, postcards etc. We will also be modelling correct letter formation and helping children to link sounds to letters through games and play. 

Our number work will include securing number recognition to 10 and looking beyond 10. We will  be offering children lots of opportunities to solve real mathematical problems for real reasons out in our woods and supporting the development of mathematical language and concepts including shape, measure and space.  

We will be supporting children in their school readiness by encouraging them to be independent in all the ways that they will be expected to at school; independent in dressing, feeding, self care, self directed play. We will also be continuing to ensure children are emotionally ready by continuing to build self-confidence and self-awareness and talking about transitions.  

Our Wild Nature sessions will offer children opportunities to engage in free play taking inspiration from nature. We will be supporting children in embracing the opportunity to take on challenges and natural risks afforded by the environment and allowing them the freedom to pursue their own interests.