Pre School

It is important to us that you as parents understand our aims in supporting your child to reach their achievements for this following year and make many friends along the way. We allow the children to create new friendships independently by providing many free play opportunities throughout the day.

Building up their confidence throughout preschool, helping them to understand boundaries and social expectations amongst others, is hugely important in order for them to create new friends and thus grow in confidence. This, in the long run, means they're more likely to accomplish higher achievements academically. With self-confidence, children are more likely to 'have a go' and tend to have a more 'daring' attitude towards new and unfamiliar situations, such as starting school.

Our highly-experienced practitioners help to build an invisible scaffolding around your child, which enables them to establish and build their independence. Our primary aim is to encourage children to feel confident, happy and content with their abilities, enabling them to be ready for “big school”.

Each day will be different as it will be led by your child’s interest. We will always try to follow your child’s lead in order to extend their imagination and help them gain the most they can from every situation. Through this, we will be challenging their thought process by engaging them in new experiences to encourage further learning. This may range from dinosaurs to aeroplanes, to planting our own vegetables or our latest venture, creating a snack café of which we hope you can visit one day!

Some of you may have noticed our ‘special helper’ signs on the door. This is for you to acknowledge when it’s your child’s special day to help us and their friends. This role involves cutting up fruit, serving dinner, choosing stories and songs throughout the day and any other help they can think of!

One of our main aims throughout this year is to promote your child’s independence in every aspect of preschool life. This will be through everyday tasks where they are given more freedom and choice and their voice is heard, such as: Cleaning our teeth; Washing our faces; Cutting up fruit for our daily snack; Leading activities; Everyday problem-solving; Using a knife and folk; Pouring our own drinks; Dressing ourselves independently; Wiping ourselves correctly after the toilet: and many more day to day tasks!

While our prime goal is promoting self-confidence and independence, we do also prioritise preparing them a little for the academic side of the school, for example giving them a head start on phonics! This involves not only recognising but forming some letters such as their name. We also involve numbers and shapes in our everyday activities, for example, the day’s date, learning the days of the week and looking at numbers beyond 10.

Hopscotch has an outdoor mud kitchen which is accessible all year round. This area involves mud, water, sand, pots, pans, and cooking utensils where they can explore role play, mixing, making mud pies and measuring, extending their maths skills. This is an invaluable experience for many children as it is something they don’t always experience and we all know children love the freedom of becoming messy! It opens up a whole natural learning environment through play, which we consider being a key aspect of learning. Due to this, we please ask all children to have a pair of wellies and appropriate attire for messy outdoor play. These messy play experiences will also continue indoors so please consider the clothing your child wears during a Preschool day! The children have decorated their own ‘messy play t-shirts’ to wear during mucky activities, however as you know glitter, paint and glue can get everywhere!

To make our preschool unique and exciting, we aim to provide a large range of opportunities in and out of the nursery. these include;

Library

The children often take a trip to the library, either using our Hopscotch minibus or catching the bus down into town to read some stories or join their singing session. During the festive season, we like to visit Bath Abbey on our way to listen to some carol singers rehearsing!

Local Community trips

We often use the Hopscotch minibus to get out and about, exploring our local community, such as Bath City Farm, local parks or the local cafe or shop to learn about money exchange and enjoy a treat! We also visit our friends at the allotment to learn all about healthy eating and preparing healthy meals, as well as take a trip to the park to have fun!

Spanish

Katy comes in once a week to introduce children to the foundations of Spanish.

Midford Manor Care Home

Each week the children visit the residents at our local care home. They explore their outdoor play area, participate in arts and crafts or join them for local trips.

Horse Riding

Occasionally we take the children to the farm to help feed and look after the animals and go horse riding.

Tennis

The children have tennis lessons once a week with Bloomfield Tennis Club to learn the basic beginning skills.

Hopscotch celebrations

Join us each year for our Christmas Party to enjoy mulled wine and mince pies as well as our Summer Party to say goodbye to our School leavers.

Check out our Events page for further details!

Whether you’re looking for full-time care or just preschool sessions, we aim to provide something convenient for everyone and with that, our sessions are flexible but reasonably priced.

Please do not hesitate to give us a call to ask us any more questions you may have.