Caring for Your Child
Key Person System
Your child's key person is your first point of contact. They will help all they can during the early ‘settling in’ days and will build special relationships within their key families. They will be responsible for getting to know everything about your child and for monitoring progress in all areas of development. Within our daily routines, we have ‘Key Family Time’. This is an opportunity for your child to enjoy small group activities with their key person and the rest of the key group. A personal touch, and a sense of belonging within our nursery is important to us.
Special Educational Needs
If your child has any special educational needs we will be happy to discuss this with you and provide a plan of development to ensure the best for your child. At The Apple Tree we have 2 experienced and highly trained SENCO’s. If we begin to spot signs and indicators of your child needing a bit of extra help, we will discuss this with you in an informal and sensitive manner, and if necessary, receive additional advice and support from other professionals. As and when needed, we seek appropriate further SEND training for the staff team, and continue to work closely with external agencies. Please see our nursery SEND Policy for further information.
The Early Years Foundation
The EYFS was introduced to enable all our children to learn freely and build confidence. At The Apple Tree we follow the play based EYFS principles and strongly believe in what they represent. This gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life. The children play and learn in a fun environment with adults who understand and care about them, ensuring that each individual child is learning through high quality play, tailored towards their interests and individual needs.
Parents as Partners
We aim to ensure that every parent feels part of our ‘Apple Tree Family’. We work hard to form good relationships with our families so that information regarding your child, be it developmental, social or health related, can be exchanged comfortably and confidentially. We invite our parents and carers into the nursery throughout the year for a range of sessions eg. stay and play, a school admissions workshop, Christmas parties, parent evenings, a graduation ceremony, storytelling time, ‘gardening with grandad’, to name but a few.
It is important to us that we create a close-knit relationship with our families, to get the best from our children.
Blossom
We use ‘Blossom’ to share daily information and observations of your children. This is a digital learning journey and a great way to share information, photographs, videos and important news between home and nursery.
Extra Curricular
We invite other professionals from outside agencies to come into the nursery and offer a variety of play-based sessions. We take our children out to places of interest with parental consent. Activities that are offered include: Physical Activity Sessions (eg. football, movement to music, multi skills), Storytelling Time, Baby Yoga, Animal Visits (creepy crawlies and pets), visits to local libraries, parks, fire stations etc.