Admissions to Little Mixers Nursery and Preschool

Little Mixers Nursery is part of Oldmixon Primary School. On site nursery and preschool provides a perfect introduction to life at Oldmixon Primary School as children can play alongside each other, making the transition to formal education that little bit easier for both your child and you!

We offer places for 15 hours per week for either morning sessions (8.30am - 11.30am) or afternoon sessions (12.15pm - 3.15pm) Monday - Friday, term time only.

We have three main intakes throughout the school year - September, January and April.

We are able to offer spaces to 2 year old's who are eligible for Funded Early Education and Childcare.

To find out if you are eligible, you need to apply through North Somerset Council.

We are able to offer spaces for all 3 and 4 year old's, as all 3 and 4 year old's are entitled to 15 hours per week of free early education or childcare.

To apply for a place for your child, please contact the school office on 01934 812879.

Home Visits

When you have secured your place with us we will contact you to arrange a home visit.

Meeting us as practitioners for the first time in your child's own home will help reassure your child.

It will help us to get to know your child better and for them to feel more confident, secure and they will then feel more able to communicate freely with us when they start their settling in sessions.

Home visits can help your child have a smooth transition into our setting. They help greatly with the settling in process, enhancing relationships between nursery and home so that we can help your child to become a confident learner and explorer.

We will ask questions regarding your child's likes, dislikes and any fascinations that they may have so that we can provide toys, equipment and activities that will spark your child's interests and make them feel relaxed and secure.

Home visits are also a very invaluable time for you as parents/carers to ask any questions regarding our setting, the routines, learning approaches and what is planned for your child's future with us.

We will discuss with you about your child's development and how we will work together to develop their skills and knowledge further.

It is really important to us that we gain a strong and positive communication right from the beginning so that you as parents/carers feel relaxed and happy that your child is being looked after and nurtured in a wonderful, safe and exciting way.

Physical Development

In Nursery we encourage and help develop the children's fine motor and gross motor skills.

We have a finger gym station permanently in the room where we offer interesting and exciting fine motor activities for the children to access independently.

These activities play an important part in the first step of your child's writing journey. They help to strengthen all the muscles in their hands as well as develop their pincer grip.

Developing the muscles in their hands also enable the children to perform important tasks independently like feeding themselves, buttoning and zipping clothes, grasping objects and painting/mark making.

By encouraging and developing your child's gross motor skills it will help your child to gain strength, balance, coordination and confidence within their body.

It is also important for your child to have regular exercise so that they have a healthy lifestyle. In Nursery we have regular yoga sessions, use the large climbing equipment outside and take part in many music and movement games/activities.

The children have opportunities to use balance bikes, trikes and scooters. We have a range of items that the children can access themselves such as balls, bats, hoops, beanbags, dancing ribbons and stilts.

If you would like any support or guidance with your child's development then please come and speak to a member of staff.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Personal, social and emotional development is a key factor in a child's journey through nursery.

As staff we aim to be positive role models within the nursery setting to support your child's development.

Personal Development is based upon children's obtainment of knowledge, individual personal skills, their ability to think and the way in which they perceive themselves.

Social Development: How we come to understand ourselves in relation to others, how we make friends, understand the rules of society and behave towards others.

Emotional Development: Having feelings, understanding them and having the ability to feel empathy towards others and their feelings.

We have established a daily routine to help the children to feel safe and secure with rules and guidelines that the children help to develop. This routine can be flexible to support the children's needs.

We provide a rich learning environment for the children to explore the world around them, we encourage them to try new things and to be curious and we praise their achievements.

We model affectionate, kind and generous behaviour when interacting with the children and with other adults within the setting and share our feelings to help children develop empathy for others.

There are daily opportunities for children to play with others their own age and we encourage sharing, taking turns, listening to others, sharing ideas and how to resolve any conflict in a calm way.

Here are a few tips to help develop your child's personal, social and emotional development at home:

Show love and affection to your child. Hug, cuddle, read and talk with them throughout the day.
Encourage your child to try new things. Help them to see what they are capable of and let them know how pleased you are with their achievements.
Give your child plenty of opportunities to play.
Show your feelings, let them see if you are happy, sad, excited, frustrated etc.
Establish a routine, this will help to build your child's confidence
Acknowledge your child's feelings, encourage them to talk about how they feel. Give comfort when your child is upset and encourage them to comfort others.
If you would like any help or guidance with your child's development then please ask a member of staff

Literacy

Literacy in Nursery is a combination of early reading, pre writing skills and early phonics.

Within our setting we have a quiet, comfortable, reading area for the children to look at a range of fiction and non fiction books, story sacks and story trays. We have a writing area stocked with lots of interesting resources inviting the children to mark make.

Early writing

Pre writing skills are essential for a child to develop the ability to hold and move a pencil fluently, this will eventually lead to future writing. Within the child's physical development they are provided with a wide range of fine motor activities to strengthen fingers and hands before the writing journey begins.

We provide many opportunities to explore mark making both inside and outside of the classroom. Chalk, pens, paint, mud, brushes, sponges, mops, sticks, feathers, pom poms and leaves are all great examples of resources that we use to make marks with.

Children sometimes need encouragement to make marks and we aim to capture the child's imagination by making these activities both interesting and fun. Making marks doesn't have to be boring!!!

Gross motor skills and core strength are developed by mark making on a large easel or wall and by laying on the floor to draw on large sheets of paper on the ground, or paper on the underside of a table.

Fine motor skills are developed by using a pincer grip to pick up smaller objects to make marks with.

As the children develop their mark making skills we encourage them to think about the marks and maybe give meaning to their creations. The adults in our setting model writing daily and explain what we are doing.

Maths

Maths is an important part of learning in the early years. It provides vital life skills that will help children problem solve, measure and develop their own spatial awareness and teach them how to use and understand shapes.

We encourage the use of maths skills in our daily routine. Maths skills are developed in role play, construction, stories and rhymes, messy play, outdoor play, imaginative play and exploring.

Nursery is a great environment for problem solving and to help solve these problems together. Staff can often be heard asking 'I have a problem, can anyone help me?' problems could be 'How can I move the water from this bowl to another bowl? How can I make my tower taller or my track longer?' or 'How can I fit these pieces into a puzzle' There are many 'problems the children can help to solve at Nursery and at home.

Within our nursery setting we have an inviting maths area with a large range of maths resources to enhance play and learning including:

* Peg boards * Sorting bears * 2D and 3D shapes * playdough * number books and rhymes * puzzles * Building blocks and construction * Shape sorters * small world toys

These resources and many more are incorporated into our daily activities and are available for the children to access independently.

Anything can be a maths resource and numbers and shapes can be found everywhere within our environment. Here are some ideas of maths activities for you to try at home with your children:

Sort everyday objects into colour, shape, size. For example; put socks into pairs, sort stones from the garden into large and small, sort some building blocks by colour.
Count objects found around the home; cars on the street, trees, pasta pieces, toys you could try counting jumps or claps and how many stairs there are as you go up and down them.
Go on a treasure hunt; Can you find 2 teddy bears? 3 leaves? 1 cushion etc.
Go on a number hunt; look for numbers in the house and when you are out and about.
Shape hunt; What shapes can you find around your home and in the environment outside?

If you would like any help or guidance with your child's development please ask a member of staff

Understanding of the world

The area Understanding of the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community by being given opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

Children learn about the world around them by using all of their senses. At nursery we encourage children to look carefully at things and provide opportunities to experience different textures and smells. We encourage children to be curious about things and to investigate how things work or what will happen if they do a particular thing like pouring more and more water into a container.

Watching things grow and change over time is something that we do continuously at nursery, we have introduced a number of plants and natural resources to the setting and the children help to take care of them. At home you could watch flowers in a vase open and notice the changes as they eventually die or leave a piece of bread in a sealed bag and watch as it starts to go mouldy.

At nursery we encourage children to talk about themselves and their families, to share special times, events and traditions. We help them to understand that they are unique and to talk about similarities and differences in relation to family and friends. We learn about and celebrate different traditions such as birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Halloween and bonfire night to name a few.

Children are fascinated by different occupations and this is evident in their imaginative play. We provide plenty of opportunities for the children to explore these roles by creating areas such as a post office, doctor surgery, shops, vets surgery, cafe, space station and many many more.

Small world toys such as a farm, garage, zoo, trains are all important resources to help the children to learn about the world they live in.

Technology is an important part of the world that we live in and the children have access to toys and resources to develop skills in this area. They are supported in turning on and operating simple equipment, in exploring technological toys with knobs or pulleys and making toys work by pressing parts or lifting flaps to achieve an effect.

We help the children to understand that information can be retrieved from computers and often if they ask a question we will try to find the answer by looking on the computer or Ipad. Children are supported to complete simple programmes on the computer and to interact with age appropriate software.

Using technology also supports communication, language and literacy, hand eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Expressive arts and design

Expressive arts and Design focuses on developing a child's imagination, creativity and their ability to use media and materials. Children do this in a range of ways including singing songs and making music, dancing, playing with colours, textures and design.

Within our daily routine we have circle time. this is an opportunity for the children to listen to stories but also sing songs and dance along with actions. We have lots of favourite songs and rhymes and we often use a song bag to help us to choose a song whilst also developing communication skills.

Here are some of our favourite songs:

We listen to many different types of music including Classical, rock and roll, Chinese drums, African safari, Irish jig and pop music. We listen to and talk about the music, What can you hear? How does it make you feel? How can we move to this music? The music and dance is a great way for the children to express themselves.

We have a wide range of musical instruments and the children are encouraged to explore the sounds that they make and how the sounds change. We practice tapping out simple rhythms to traditional songs and also to songs the children have made up.

In our large conservatory we have a variety of construction resources including:

* Wooden building blocks * Duplo * Mega blocks * Magnetic shapes *Stickle bricks *Sensory blocks * Natural logs, sticks, coconut shells *Train track * Wooden bridges *Sticks and string

The children have access to these resources and are encouraged to explore and use them independently. we model how to stack blocks horizontally, vertically and to create enclosures and spaces.

We have an inviting messy play area offering sand and water play, painting and lots opportunities to explore textures and colours. Some of our favourites are:

* Shaving foam * Cooked pasta * Gloop (cornflour and water) * Colour mixing * Playdough

* Coloured rice * Porridge oats * Cereals * Jelly

You might like to try using some of these with your children at home.