Hopscotch is a private Day Nursery providing high quality Pre-School education and facilities for children between the ages of 1 and 5 years. Under the supervision of fully qualified Nursery Nurses we strive to provide excellent care, routine, and security in which all children can thrive and reach their own unique individual potential.

We provide a well planned day that allows the children to explore through a variety of activities such as painting, cooking, drawing, counting songs, story times, music times, role play and outdoor play, french and Jo Jingles

At Hopscotch we recognise that children learn actively through direct experience and strongly believe in learning through fun.

We enable children to maximise their independence by self serving of snack and drinks and freedom of choice over the activities they choose whilst encouraging the children to experience a variety of activities and situations. The team at Hopscotch Day Nursery make time to regularly observe and record the children.

These activities are planned towards Early Learning Goals and the new Early Years Foundation Stage.

These observations and records are made continually by the team and it is the childs key workers responsibility to collate all this information and feed it back to the parents of the individual child through meet and greet at the door, opening evenings and yearly parents evening. The learning journeys are always termly available.

We aim to allow each individual child to leave our care with a solid knowledge of the basics for survival within school. We build on their confidence and self esteem, allowing them to develop to their full potential.

Everything we do at Hopscotch has an outcome that is in line with curriculum we are required to follow. We prepare activities, well in advance, using Early Learning Goals and the new Early Years Foundation Stage to ensure we are able to devote time in Nursery to encourage your child to engage in active learning as a result of direct experiences.

In effect, we place an invisible support network around your child in order to help them establish and then build on their independence. This may sound time consuming and a difficult thing to achieve with so many children who are attending nursery, but our staff are given the title 'Key-worker'. Taken in its simplest form, this means your child will have a dedicated member of staff (or Key Worker) who is charged with delivering the promises we make to you in respect of developing your child.

The Key Worker is also charged with building and maintaining the relationship between you and Hopscotch. It is this person who will collate the information and the evidence to support the progress your child is making and pass it back to you during informal conversations as you are hosted whilst dropping off, or collecting, or during more formal meetings at open days or our bi-annual parent's evenings.

You might like a view of the detail behind the sessions we run so that ensure we really do provide care, knowledge, confidence and self-esteem to your child for the duration of the time he or she is with us:

1. Self-serving of snacks and drinks
2. Freedom of choice over activities
3. Variety in activities and situations
4. Expression using painting
5. Exploration through cooking
6. Learning to count using song
7. Feeding imagination with story time
8. Role play with clothing and props
9. Outdoor play

Download the Principles of new foundation stage leaflet

The activities in our structured courses are stimulating and engaging. They include storytelling, drama, crafts and many fun songs and games. Our informal and friendly classes or clubs provide the best and safest environment for children to develop their self-esteem and self-confidence. They rapidly acquire enough knowledge to enjoy using the language for communication and expression.

WHY SINGING IS GOOD FOR CHILDREN:

• Encourages language & listening skills
• Develops numeracy skills
• Provides an opportunity to experiment with sound and words
• Stimulates imagination & learning
• Improves social skills
• Helps self-expression
• Develops self-esteem
• Helps children to understand emotions
• Introduces children to different sounds/cultures, songs from around the world
• Enhances understanding of rhythm and timing
• Improves co-ordination
• Develops and generates memories
• Helps you to feel happy and positive
• Enhances general well-being
• Singing is fun!

Youwant2cook.com provides fun, safe and healthy cooking courses for preschool children they will be in hopscotch every other week.

They have plenty of pre-school options available including 'Non-cook cooking lessons' that are tailored to using foods that can be prepared in a classroom environment rather than a kitchen. Dishes include pasta salad, houmous dips with pitta bread and fruit kebabs. The emphasis is on safety, fun, confidence, inspiring interest and learning new things about food.

Here at Hopscotch we do our best to promote physical activity in a variety of ways to appeal to all children, this includes our Baby Ballet/Music and movement that takes place on a Friday morning. Katie our trained Ballet dancer comes into nursery and works with the children for approx 20 mins using themes and childrenÕs music to encourage the children and add to the fun.

To encourage more physical activity, we also have a dance student come into the nursery once a week to teach the children some modern and lively hip hop dancing, she choreographs simple steps and routines for the children to thoroughly enjoy.