Time: 9.15 to 12.00pm Monday to Friday
Please ring Rena at 086 3938729
We have both indoor and outdoor play areas for the children to enjoy a run-around during break time.
We are fully insured and a member of the I.P.P.A. (The early childhood organisation) and we are approved by the H.S.E.
Much time is spent helping children to learn social and self-help skills. Children at this age need patience and guidance, learning how to interact with their peers and making positive choices. Their language skills and experience in resolving conflicts is increasing. Play based pre-school programs provide many opportunities for them to practice their language skills.
Included in the program are experiences in language arts, dramatic play, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, creative arts, science, math, music, and movement.
Play based preschools offer a hands on, developmentally appropriate program that builds the social, emotional, physical, language and intellectual development of children through well-planned activities that encourage self-discovery.
Their activities foster language arts, reading, math, science, creativity, and social/emotional/physical development. When these activities are provided at the appropriate level and in a nurturing environment, children will take their next steps well prepared and with their natural thirst for knowledge intact.
Sample time table
9.15 Free play
9.45 Table top time
10.15 Lunch time
10.40 Library time
10.55 Outdoor play
11.30 Songs/dancing/sand/water
12.00 Home
The above is a sample day in our play based pre-school: It's 9:00 a.m. and the room come alive as small voices fill the air and children become engaged in a variety of activities. On the floor, three children gather and work cooperatively putting a large floor puzzle together. Children are also busy stringing beads, investigating how magnets work and assembling puzzles at the table. The corner is bustling with activity as it is transformed into a supermarket. Here the children explore with a variety of materials including paper, pencils, cash registers, and trolleys full of food. Elsewhere a tall block building is under construction. The dress up corner is host to active fire-fighters using the hose from the toy Hoover to put out the pretend fires. Later in the day, children are actively engaged with painting, cutting, gluing, drawing, dancing, and creating.
This is just a glimpse of what goes on at the Play based pre-school on a typical day. The children are playing and having fun, but they are also learning. It is through creative play that children learn about themselves, their peers, and their world. The Play school offers meaningful, age-appropriate experiences that encourage children to learn through play.
Perhaps it is easy to see how hopping, jumping, or dancing help build large motor coordination just as it is evident that stringing beads, cutting, drawing, or putting a puzzle together help children to develop small muscle dexterity and eye-hand coordination. However, this is just a small sample of the benefits of play.
Children playing are free to explore and discover different stages of writing. Some children are writing their names or names of family members. Other children are making straight lines and squiggles. Don't discount these marks as just scribbling. Just as babbling is a foundation for speaking, scribbling is a foundation for writing. Writing is a natural and gradual process. Whether it is random or controlled scribbling or writing mock letters and words, this is evidence of emergent literacy in young children.
Children playing in the dress up corner, the dollhouse, or make-believe scenarios can create situations that they can deal with and control. Children may work out their fears or anxieties through make-believe.
Materials at the manipulative table, legos, or large wooden blocks provide children with many learning opportunities. These activities promote social growth, sharing, exploration of sizes, shapes, distances, proportions and weight, concepts such as "smaller than" or "bigger than", counting, one-to-one correspondence, classification, sorting and matching. Each child gets to be the leader for one day. This child gets to be first in the line and helps the teacher with chores. They also lead the class through songs and poems.
The variety of activities offered at the play based pre-school give children a feeling of satisfaction and joy. These positive feelings allow children to gain confidence in their skills and abilities, resulting in a strong self-concept. Playing also encourages children to think and create divergently. Play encourages many positive outcomes; Play is the work of children!
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Advantages of a play based setting
›Play occurs naturally in young children. It is therefore familiar to the child. It is a way to harness what the child is already able to do to help their learning.
›Play cannot be wrong. It therefore provides a safe situation for the child to try out different things without the fear of failure. This is important for the child’s development of a positive self-esteem.
›Play provides the opportunity for extending learning. A carefully structured play environment will provide opportunities for learning across a wide ability range; i.e. sand can be a soothing, sensory experience but can also provide opportunity for a child to begin to learn about capacity and volume.
›Play provides the opportunity for a child to practise and perfect their skills in a safe environment. They can try out new skills.
›Play is always at the child’s own level, so the needs of all the children within the group can be met.
Child development experts say that children in academic preschools often learn math and reading at the expense of their social skills. Kids from play-based programs usually catch up academically, while kids from academic backgrounds may never catch up socially. This can be devastating to their self-esteem. According to Martha E. Mock, assistant professor at the University Of Rochester Warner School Of Education. “Young children learn best through meaningful interaction with real materials and caring adults and their peers, not through the drilling of isolated skills,” http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ed_Academic_Preschools/
Value of our Playschool to Children
›Gives independence to young children
›Gives them a first taste of being away from their parents
›Helps the child to interact with other children as they play
›In some cases we are the child’s only experience of playing with other children
›Helps to prepare the child for “big school” by getting the child used to listening to the teacher reading the story, go to the toilet by themselves and generally how to behave in a group of other children
›It is a stepping stone for the child, helping him/her progress from the cocoon that is home, to the big world that is Primary school.