Berkeley Gardens Day Nursery, 72 Berkeley Avenue, Reading RG1 6HY. Telephone: 0118 9500 116 Email: [email protected]

The Prime Areas:

PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

To help each child in our care to develop their Personal, Social and Emotional skills, we will support them:

To feel safe and well cared for.
To feel that they belong.
To understand that who they are is important.
To have a voice and to know that they matter.
To understand, label and manage their emotions.
To develop resilience.
To start to understand how to interact with others and to develop and maintain relationships.
To start to recognise the needs and wishes of others, demonstrating empathy and care.
To negotiate and resolve conflict.
To become a self-motivated learner.
To develop the courage to try new things, to take risks safely and to keep trying when things get hard.
To celebrate effort as well as success and to recognise when they get better at something.
To prepare for new experiences such as moving to a new room.

By doing this we will help the children to develop: Secure attachments, authentic relationships and connection to give children the confidence to explore, experiment and investigate the environments that we create for them. But it is also those trusting relationships that provide:

encouragement when children are unsure,
comfort and reassurance when things and/or emotions are overwhelming,
and the support to keep going when things become difficult.

It is also through relationships that children learn how to interact with others, how to be a good friend, to understand behavioural expectations and why they are important, to keep themselves safe, to be kind and to start to think about the feelings and needs of others. These are essential life skills that children need to navigate life.

COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

To help each child in our care to develop their Communication and Language skills, we will support them:

To continue to develop and refine the skills they need to communicate their needs, wants and feelings.
To experiment with sounds and words.
To develop their listening and attention skills.
To have a voice and to express their views and opinions.
To increase their vocabulary and their knowledge of how language works.
To hold conversations – to understand and to be understood.
To understand how to be a good conversational partner.
To recognise the contribution of others.

We need to support and nurture the development of receptive and expressive language in order to help children to communicate and to interact/build relationships with the people in their world. It is through everyday opportunities to use language and sensitive interactions from adults that children will be supported to express their needs, views and feelings, to make connections, to develop a good breadth of vocabulary and to build on what they know to better understand the world in which they live.

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

To help each child in our care to develop their Physical skills, we will support them:

To develop good core stability.
To continue to develop their balance and coordination so that they can navigate spaces safely.
To continue to refine gross and fine motor control.
To stay safe and learn to manage risks for themselves.
To manipulate equipment and tools with an increasing level of control and precision.
To participate in physical games and sports.
To understand how to keep their bodies healthy including oral Health.
To grow in their abilities to manage their own personal care needs.
To experience the world through their senses.

Physical development includes growth and each child’s ability to coordinate the use of large and small muscles to perform specific movements. The body develops rapidly within the first 5 years of life, so it is important that our environments and opportunities encourage children to continue to develop and refine their gross and fine motor control. This will enable children:

to navigate our environments safely,
to develop the ability to undertake a growing number of tasks for themselves such as managing their own clothing, using utensils and tools (including writing implements) with an increasing level of control and precision,
and to physically explore our environments both in and outside.

About

Berkeley Gardens Day Nursery is the second Nursery to follow from Forbury Gardens. It opened in July 2011, and is located in Reading. We received a 5 star rating from Reading Borough Council for food safety and a silver award from Chiltern Training Ltd for continuous support for our staff training towards their Diplomas in Professional Childcare.

We will provide a high standard of healthy meals using quality ingredients. Your child will receive a two-course lunch and snacks which are prepared by our cook using fresh ingredients.

Welfare

The health and safety of all the children are of fundamental importance. We aim to provide a secure and pleasant environment for everyone. We practice a whole range of safety policies and procedures. Your child is allocated a ‘Key Person’ within their room, who is responsible for your child’s well being, ensuring your child feels individual, secure and cherished while they are away from home.