‘Play is a super power to learning’
At Holywell we aim to educate the whole child and to ensure children are happy, healthy and fulfill their potential through an engaging and nurturing environment.
Play enhances language development, social competence, creativity, imagination, and thinking skills. Children are encouraged to be independent learners, problem solvers and gain good personal and social skills.
At Holywell we understand the importance of ensuring each child gains a love for learning in their early years, through a stimulating and creative environment. Children have free flow access to the both the indoor and outdoor environment during child initiated learning.
Once a week Reception go to Forest School and learn about the natural world around us. The children are offered opportunities to cook on a camp fire, whittle a stick and use a bow saw to make tree cookies. We believe that children learn a lot through free flow and independent access to the outdoors and it helps to improve their educational achievement and ensures they grow up to be well rounded citizens.
The adults will use the children’s interests or next steps to develop play through offering a breadth of opportunities or resources for us to use in a variety of ways. The children have taught sessions throughout the day including phonics, maths and topic. We enjoy a mixture of adult-led and child-led learning and the children choose their own topics for learning (see below for topic plans).
The Reception staff are;
Mrs Watkins (Foundation Stage Leader and Reception Teacher)
Miss Evans (SENDCo and Reception Teacher)
Mrs O’Connor (Reception Teacher)
Miss Roberts (Reception Teacher)
Miss Hale
Miss Lewis
Mrs Sadler
Mrs Hellingsworth
Mrs Barnard will teach Reception PPA on a Wednesday afternoon.
We talk to the children about what they know and they help us to choose their own topics. Here are the topics we have chosen so far:
Topics 2018-19
Autumn 1 Special Me topic for parents
Spring Master Chef Parent Info
Summer 1 growing parent topic map
Topics 2017-18
Summer 1 Magic and Mayhem
Spring 2 From A to B
Spring 1 Fun with Food
Autumn 2 Sparkle and Shine
Autumn 1 All About Me
Topics for 2016-17
Summer 2 Happy Holidays!
Summer 1 Trolls Parent Info
Spring 2 Spring and Growing
Spring 1 Ready Steady Make
Autumn 2 Celebrations
Autumn 1 Castles and Kingdoms
