I Learn Nurseries
Finding their own way and learning from their peers is exactly how we encourage children to learn in our four ‘I Learn Education’ day nursery settings – situated in Brigg, Caistor, Scunthorpe and Crowle.
Imagination informed learning
Children gain an understanding of the world from spending so much time communicating imaginatively with their friends and learning from each other. Navigating around what could traditionally be seen as pigeon-hole items or topics, we don’t think at this age that children need to learn about rockets, dragons or pirates, for example, unless they show a natural interest in the subject.
The EYFS stipulates that the three prime areas, the most important areas, for children of this age to learn and develop are:
- Personal, social and emotional skills
- Physical development
- Communication and language
This is the deeper level of learning that we ensure our children are engaged in. In addition to these, we also ensure the children are learning literacy and maths, understanding the world and enhancing their creativity in the arts.
Our duty at this stage is to absolutely maximise our children’s empathy, confidence, independence, ability to play (and work) collaboratively, ability to develop their bodies through varied and constant physical movement, resilience and other character and life skills. If they decide they’d like to do this through playing in the mud kitchen or through making boats, let’s let them decide and let them lead.
Harnessing children’s capabilities
There is a great saying that when an adult takes charge of doing things for a child, the only thing that child learns is that the adult can do things better than them. Children are far, far more capable than most people give them credit for. If you direct a child to use certain materials and imitate an adult’s creativity in making a dragon, that child learns nothing. They end up with a pretty craft, but the learning is minimal. Give the child instead a pile of loose parts, some glue or double-sided sticky tape and let their imagination run free.
You may not end up with as pretty (or identifiable!) an object at the end of it but you will end up with a child who understands that their views and creativity matters. The child will learn to be independent and to think for themselves.
Fancy getting wild?
We offer Forest school sessions as part of your child’s day. The children use their imaginations and build dens and often tell elaborate stories as part of their experiences.
Staff support babies through heuristic play and treasure baskets as they play and explore freely with a large number of real-world and natural objects. Staff observe and let children make their own choices, with little adult intervention, (this play is similar to how they would be more interested in the wrapping rather than the present!) This type of play does wonders for building confidence and helps their concentration span.
Kids Club and School Holidays
Through Kids Club too, we offer before and after school wraparound care as well as School holiday provision.
During School holidays we offer sessions at each setting which include a variety of activities (often planned by the children!) as well as Forest School sessions at our Private Woodland in Caistor (we provide transport to the site).