Activities for this age group will revolve mainly around the individual child's feeding and sleeping patterns as established by parents.
Activities include on a daily basis: one-to-one singing and talking to children, lots of eye and physical contact, regular changing of baby's position, use of gyms, feely mats, mouthing toys, rattles, play ring, activity centre, etc.
Heuristic play: a special time for free play and exploration of safe natural materials whilst closely observed by staff. We will use 'Treasure Chests', which are boxes prepared by key workers for a child with safe general household equipment for the children to explore on a weekly basis.
We use activities that promote sitting skills, progressing on to activities to promote mobile exploration.
We believe that babies are never too young to be introduced to books and story-time. We introduce simple cloth books initially and take older babies to the library for story-time.
There is a continuous provision of water and sand play, creative, sensory and music areas, which is enhanced regularly.
Both rooms have a continuous provision of a variety of areas of learning. These include wet and sand play, creative, construction, maths, language, role play, small world, reading, music and ICT areas. Children playing in these areas will be observed by staff, who will develop the play and learning by enhancing the provision.
An example of this: the children are playing in the role play area and are making cups of tea for one another. This is then used by staff to promote physical and mathematical development in the water tray. A tea set is put into the tray for the children to practise their pouring skills (physical development) and through doing this their knowledge and understanding of the conservation of liquid (mathematical) is also developed.
We strongly believe that literacy and numeracy skills are essential for life-long learning. We use the Jolly Phonics and Number Zoo schemes to assist the development of these skills. They are great fun and all children thoroughly enjoy participating in such activities. They mainly consist of singing, speaking, listening and kinaesthetic activities done during circle time daily.
These are supported through the use of the Write Dance scheme, which promotes the development of fine and gross motor skills through musical and creative activities combined.
All activities are differentiated to suit the individual's needs, enjoyments and interests.