A typical day at Pre-School

A typical day at Pre-School…

Midday

With midday now fast approaching, the end of another busy morning starts to draw to a close for children and parents.

From their third birthday, children are welcome, by prior arrangement, to stay and enjoy Lunch Club. Those children will have brought a named lunch box to Pre-School with them and we encourage parents to provide a healthy lunch for their child.

So now it’s time once more for tidying up and once the children have made their contribution to this task, the children staying for Lunch Club will be seated on the blue floor mat and may enjoy a short story or a “tell and share” dialogue.

At the same time staff will help our younger children to collect their Busy Boxes and put on their coats and then form a line ready to be collected by a parent or carer. We take the safety of children in our care very seriously and are careful to make sure that children are handover over to the correct adult; it is then the adult’s responsibility to ensure that children keep safely away from the road, car park etc.

Before collecting their child parents must sign their children ‘out’ again noting the time of departure in our folder left in the corridor.

A Supervisor will always accompany children for “handover” and once again, should you need to speak to the Supervisor or a member of staff, there is time at this point to do so.

Lunch Club

Following a short “blue mat activity”, those children staying for Lunch Club now repeat the hand-washing and toilet exercise in the cloakroom. Once finished, they return to collect their lunch boxes from just outside the kitchen (the kitchen is out of bounds to the children for health and safety reasons) and then find which table place has been allocated to them by looking for their own velcro name badge.

Staff use their judgement with place settings to ensure that children needing supervision are appropriately seated near to a staff member. Children are taught not to open their lunch box until all children are seated and a staff member says they can begin lunch. We do ask that parents provide a spoon in the lunch box each time yoghurt or similar is provided, also to chop in half any grapes or cherry tomatoes (this is for health and safety reasons).

At the end of Lunch Club, any food wrappings and used baby wipes (provided by Pre-School for sticky fingers) will be returned in the child’s lunch box.

Lunch Club is seen as an important development step for children as they learn to sit down and eat together with their peers.