Bumble Bees is a preschool 3-5 year room, consisting of Ladybirds and Dragonflies. Continuous provision areas together with stimulating activities are planned to encourage understanding through logic, reasoning and free thought.

Story-time, singing-time and group-time are more structured to encourage listening, concentration and communication and language skills. Group-time may consist of registration or show and tell sessions, whereby children talk about what they have made or done. Sometimes children bring in toys and items of interest from home to show and talk about at group-time. All children are encouraged to participate, supporting confidence and self-esteem, always tailoring participation to the individual child’s needs and interests. Mark-making skills are further encouraged, offering name cards to copy or to mark make on. Mark-making opportunities as in all rooms are evident in all areas of the provision, further encouraging early emergent writing. Children’s personal skills are further developed in Bumble Bees, getting them ‘ready for school’.

With this in mind we work closely with the feeder schools, having meetings to discuss the term ‘ready for school’. This has been invaluable and we have followed advice from the teachers and have introduced activities into the planning, such as name cards to encourage name recognition and emergent name writing or mark-making. There is more emphasis on listening and attention activities, which are known to support children with early reading skills. Continued support with managing own hygiene and personal skills, such as putting on and fastening coats and shoes. All these areas have been highlighted as important to successful and smooth transitions for children into their new schools.

All the staff are committed to ensuring your child is ‘ready for school’, so they leave Hackenthorpe Hall Nursery well rounded, confident, happy, independent individuals ready to embrace new experiences and learning.