Toddler & Preschool Nursery in Romford
Our Toddler 2/Pre-School Room is another large open plan room, children in this room are aged between 2.5 years and school age. Children from 2.5 years – 3 years are classed as our toddler 2’s and children from 3 years – 5 years are classed as our Pre-Schoolers.
We use the same principle in this room as in our Baby/Toddler and mix the ages in the room to enable us to provide a wide range of activities to interest all children and to develop their learning at their own pace – although the children do have time in their own age groups throughout the day, they are also able to join in mixed age/ability activities which provides them with a varied experience and extended opportunities to learn.
As this is an open plan room, all of our toys and resources are freely accessible to enable the children to choose what they want to play with and when, which helps to build their confidence and independence. In addition set activities in this room are planned to cater for all age ranges as well as for each individual child's needs and interests. In our Toddler 2/Pre-School room, we introduce a little more structure to our activities to begin preparing the children for school. Children are encouraged to help to tidy away resources after they have finished playing with them and to make their own choices when it comes to snack times and lunch time.
In this room the development of children is also tracked by a team of staff who carry out regular observations of the children. We use the same online observation system as in our baby/toddler 1 room which enables our parents to be kept fully up to date with their child’s progress as an email is sent when an observation has been completed, giving parents the chance to leave a comment or to upload their own observations from home.
All members of staff in this room have undertaken specific training in supporting 2-3 year old's and 3-5 year old's in addition to their childcare qualifications. Staff child ratios in this room are at least 1-4 for the 2.5-3 year old's and 1-8 for the 3-5 year old's.
Below is an example of our daily routine for the Toddler 2/Pre-School room, however we are extremely flexible and cater for the children on a day-to-day basis, lots of our activities are child-led and so may change throughout the day. In addition, we are more than happy to accommodate each parent's individual wishes in respect of sleep times throughout the day.
Typical Daily Routine of our Toddler 2/Pre-School Room:
8:00 – 8:30am – Free play while we welcome all children into nursery in the morning.
8:45 – 9:15am – Breakfast.
9:30 – 10:15am – Planned activities. (Care routines)
10:30 – 10:45am – Morning snack.
10:45 – 11:15am – Group Circle time.
11:15 – 12:00pm – Garden time.
12:00 – 12:30pm - Lunch.
12:15 – 1:00pm - Morning session children take part in planned activities and story time until home time.
1:00 – 1:15pm – Home time for our morning children and we welcome our afternoon children into nursery.
1:30 – 2:15pm – Planned activities. (Care routines)
2:30 – 2:45pm – Afternoon snack.
3:00 – 3:30pm – Garden time.
3:30 – 4:30pm – Music and movement/phonics session.
4:30 – 4:45pm – Tea.
4:45 – 5:15pm – Group Circle time. (Care routines)
5:15 – 6:00pm – Free play while children are being collected at the end of the day.
All of the children in our Toddler 2/Pre-School room are allocated their own peg, which they can keep their personal belongings, in addition they have their own trays inside the room to keep any artwork or personal items – Children are encouraged to put their own coats on their pegs at the beginning of a session to encourage their independence. If your child is due to begin nursery in this room we would ask that you bring the following items:
What to Bring to Nursery
- A few changes of clothes, including socks (preferably named)
- A pair of slippers if you wish
- We ask that if your child is still in nappies that you also bring a pack of nappies.
Over The Rainbow Day Nursery supply all food, baby wipes, and sudocream.