Literacy
Literacy development involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
The Pre-School has a selection of books which the children can access at any time. There is also a “book of the week”. Books are available linked to topics e.g. growing so that the children can independently learn through looking at the pictures.
Equipment is labelled with words and pictures to help children recognise the written word. Children also learn to recognise their coat pegs and baskets which are labelled with their names.
Children take part in group ”circle times” where they are encouraged to contribute to discussions. In all focus group activities the children are asked questions to enable them to express their knowledge and ideas.
The children have access to pens, pencils, crayons, chalks and paints to allow them to explore mark making.
The Pre-School has a selection of books which the children can access at any time. There is also a “book of the week”. Books are available linked to topics e.g. growing so that the children can independently learn through looking at the pictures.
Equipment is labelled with words and pictures to help children recognise the written word. Children also learn to recognise their coat pegs and baskets which are labelled with their names.
Children take part in group ”circle times” where they are encouraged to contribute to discussions. In all focus group activities the children are asked questions to enable them to express their knowledge and ideas.
The children have access to pens, pencils, crayons, chalks and paints to allow them to explore mark making.
Mathematics
Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, space, and measure.
At our Pre-School mathematics is not taught as a subject but is brought into everyday activities. A child may be able to count to ten but do they know what ten is? When on an outing to the park, the children may be asked to collect a certain number of conkers or to count the number of conkers collected. When building a tower of plastic bricks; how many bricks were used or how many of a particular colour were used? Board games are good way to get a child to count and dice are a good visual way of representing numbers that a child will begin to recognise. Two dice can be used to introduce simple addition. Shapes are part of mathematics. What is a square, a circle, a triangle etc. Find which shape fits in which hole or how many sides does a certain shape have. Magnetic building blocks are available for the children to construct shapes and structures. Please see the section on Understanding the World. Measure can be, how many steps to get from A to B, is the container full of empty, which ball is bigger and which is smaller etc. Fractions are to advanced for our children but the concept can still be introduced e.g. sharing, giving two children the same number of an item introduces the concept of a half each.