Early Years

By Mrs Mason, Head of Early Years

I cannot believe how quickly this year has flown past. It really doesn’t feel like 12 months since I was sat here trying to condense all the wonderful things that have happened in our Early Years department to share with you once again.

We have been continuing to working hard this year to enhance our whole provision ensuring a holistic, child-centred approach. It really is a joy to look back on all that we have achieved and experienced.

First, we continue our ongoing transition to a blended learning approach with a more fluid way of learning. Alongside our phonics and mathematics programmes, we use 'in the moment planning' to excite, challenge, extend, and give the children the time they need to practice and incorporate what they have learned in their play. The children are engrossed in what they are doing and are unaware that they are learning through their play. If they are happy, comfortable and having fun, they will remember the things they are being taught. We continue to develop our 'Loose Parts' resources, and the children in Pre-Prep have been experimenting with transient art.

We have also had some delightful furry additions to our department. Luna and Kiki, our Guinea pigs who divide their time between Nursery and Pre-Prep and more recently Humphrey, our six-month-old wirehaired dachshund. The benefits of children coming into regular contact with animals have been well studied and documented. The evidence suggests that children who have regular, consistent contact with animals have stronger immune systems, feelings of importance, social competence and self-esteem. Animals can help promote empathy and pro-social skills, such as learning to take responsibility and selfdiscipline, which contribute significantly to building resilience. Resilience, as we know, is a key factor in giving children the skills to stave off potential negative effects of challenging experiences, and it involves them persisting despite difficulties. Resilience is something we are not born with, but we learn through our early experiences and relationships. Positive relationships with pets can also help assist language acquisition and enhance verbal skills. We have already seen evidence of this within the provision, and it is an absolute joy to witness.

Christmas 2020, our Pre-Prep children performed a wonderful nativity led by Mrs Pratt and the PrePrep team. We weren’t able to share this with you in person but again, virtually. However, despite this, the children out sung themselves and performed beautifully, brimming with confidence and eager to participate.

Our Baby Room more recently had the most wonderful afternoon tea on the Terrace with their teddy friends as special guests. They were truly amazing and sat so well, enjoying their sandwiches, turn-taking and sharing. Right from this very young age, they are so many opportunities to develop independence, self-esteem and emotional and social development.

Our Toddler room have been studying the life cycle of a frog. We first had lots of frogspawn; the children were able to see the tadpoles wriggling around in their tiny cells before they poked their way out. They eagerly watched as they metamorphosed into little frogs over the coming days before releasing them back into the school pond.

The Rising 3s have hatched five stick insects from the tiniest of eggs. They clearly enjoy the bramble, ivy and privet leaves as they are already an inch long. Apparently, they can grow up to 10cm, so we may need to be on the lookout for a larger terrarium!

Our Pre-Prep learnt all about butterflies this year and were incredibly successful with our hatch and release rate. We introduced the children to insect metamorphosis and entomology. Our tiny caterpillars were soon not so tiny and spinning their cocoons before hatching into beautiful painted lady butterflies. More recently, we were very excited to have reallife parents visit us on our sports day! The children were so thrilled to see you all. It was a fantastic event. We were blessed with amazing weather, and our parents’ races were a huge success with lots of eager participants.

As you can imagine, this is such a small snapshot of all the learning opportunities that have been taking place this past year. As we look ahead to the introduction of a new Early Years Foundation Stage in September, a framework that will truly allow us to be present in the moment with children’s learning rather than continually trying to capture it and document it, we are very excited for all that the new academic year will bring our staff and our children.

Finally, I wanted to share some conversations I had with our Pre-Prep children during my regular Friday afternoon storytime. I have been focusing on children’s well-being, being loved and loving others back, being kind to one another and believing in ourselves and all that we can do. One afternoon after reading ‘Super Duper You’ by Sophy Henn we were discussing what we wanted to be when we grow up.

One boy said, “King of the whole wide world.”

Another said that “I want to be a penguin when I grow up.”

Another little girl confidently said, “Sam, I want to be five things when I grow up. A mother, a teacher, a ballet dancer, a cook and a doctor.”

There is not much I can say after that apart from, we are very proud to help install such important foundations in our children, enabling them to continue to learn, grow and have the desire to achieve all that they set out to.

Our Pre-prep setting received a makeover this year.

Nativity

Pre-Prep held their annual Christmas Nativity in Prep Hall. It was a wonderful celebration of the birth of Jesus and the performance was recorded for families to enjoy at home.

Furry Ears in Early Years

Over the last few months, we have had a few furry friends stay with us in Early Years — guinea pigs, Luna (grey) and Kiki (brown). The children and staff have loved getting to know and playing with the little fellows. The pigs take turns visiting the different age groups, from Under 2s to Pre-Prep; the children can have them on their knees, stroke them, and brush them. They feed them their favourite food, which is spinach, kale or cucumber.

As well as the enjoyment of having a class pet, animals can provide many important benefits to a child’s development.

School pets may: • Stimulate children to think and to learn, as they have a high level of natural interest in, enthusiasm for, and enjoyment of animals. • Encourage a respect and reverence for life in children, and thereby improve their relationships with their peers, parents and teachers. • Foster a sense of responsibility in children. • Improve academic achievement.

Moreover, the benefits of school pets are far reaching and can be broken down into the following development aspects: • Cognitive development – companionship with a pet stimulates memory, problem solving and game-playing, and can improve reading skills. • Emotional development – a school pet improves self-esteem, acceptance from others and lifts mood, often provoking laughter and fun. Animals can also teach compassion and give relief from anxiety. • Physical development – interaction with a pet reduces blood pressure, provides tactile stimulation, assists with pain management, gives motivation to move and walk, and stimulates the senses. • Environmental benefits – a pet in a school contributes towards the creation of a homestyle environment, with all of the above benefits continuing long after the school day is over. • Social benefits – a school pet provides a positive mutual topic for discussion, encourages responsibility and wellbeing, and develops social skills and focused interaction with others.

Pets in school also have social benefits for the school community: • They enhance the learning environment, creating a sense of security and family warmth for the children. • They encourage the involvement of parents and the wider community in school activities. • They help to promote the school as an important nurturing influence in the community. • Children naturally identify with animals; we use the children’s interactions with animals to teach them how to respect each other and how to show empathy. • Teaching children to respect and protect even the smallest animal is vital to ensure that we support the development of adults who will continue to show a respect for protecting our environment, animals and plants for generations to come. • A child’s attitude toward animals can predict future behaviour; we will teach kindness and empathy towards animals which will foster a positive attitude and in turn will reduce the likelihood of anti-social behaviour.

We have thoroughly enjoyed welcoming Luna and Kiki into our Birkenhead School family and they are greatly loved by all our children.