In the nursery the staff follows the high scope day nursery plan where they believe that children learn best by pursuing their personal interests and goals, children in High/Scope settings are encouraged to make choices about materials and activities throughout the day. As they pursue their choices and plans, children explore, ask and answer questions, solve problems, and interact with classmates and adults. In this kind of environment, children naturally engage in "key experiences" activities that foster developmentally important skills and abilities. The key experiences are grouped into 9 categories: creative representation, language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, classification, number, space, and time.
The nursery was split up into different areas tree house, blossoms, and buds.
And they were then split up again
the tree house had Green apples aged 2 ½ to 3 Red apples aged 3-4 and pips aged 4 to when they leave for school and they had a different member of staff for each set.
The blossoms were split into white, pink and blue blossoms. White blossoms were aged 18months to 24months, pink were aged 24months to 30 and blue were aged 30 to 36 months
Buds were ages 3months to 18months.
Each room had 3 members of staff and then there were 3 other members of staff who went to each different room to make sure that they could cope and then there were 3cooks and one who doubled as a cleaner.
Also in the nursery they don’t believe in any processed foods everything that the children
ate was made in the kitchens fresh and if a child has a special diet then they cater to that child’s needs: Vegetarian, lactose intolerant etc.
My routine was the same for everyday and this was good as it gave the children a structure on which to work on and prepared them for a school environment. Also in having a set routine I new when I had to do something and when I could have my breaks and lunch and when I was going to be needed in a certain area of the nursery.
Routine:
9am start- clear up after breakfast and set up red room
9.30am play in red room
9.50am clear up the children
10am play in green room
10.30am go outside
11am set up lunch
11.30 go for lunch (children and me)
12.30 children sleep
13.20 children get up
14.00 play in red room
14.30 go outside
15.00 set up for tea
16.00 clear up / clean- mop and sweep and generally clean the rooms
16.20 play in green room
17.00 leave
Overall I really enjoyed my work experience placement it was fun interesting and I met a lot of new people but I definitely wouldn’t choose this as a career path for me as it really has just put me of doing it completely from the work that they do and the hours that they have to work but for a work experience placement I couldn’t complain and on the last Friday they let me leave at 2.30 instead of 5 because of the work I had done.
