Our indoor learning environment is split into two main areas; the tactile room and the paint room. The tactile room contains sand and water play, malleable experiences, games and puzzles, a small book area, a small mark making area and the home corner. The paint room contains the sticking and gluing workshop, paint, small world resources, large block play, a large carpet area with an Interactive Whiteboard, graphics area, maths area, investigation area and musical instruments.

We are very well resourced at Lydalls and the environment is designed to encourage children to choose the resources that they would like to use for themselves. Some resources are available to children all the time. We call this our ‘continuous provision’. We then carefully plan how the environment can be organised to stimulate and extend children’s learning by adding resources to provoke and challenge through new lines of play, exploration and investigation. This is always based on our observations of the children’s current interests and fascinations. We call this our ‘extended’ provision.

Our curriculum is a hybrid curriculum, combining play based learning with 13 curriculum goals, core experiences and curricular structures/routines. Please see our Curriculum Policy for detailed information. We also use the document ‘Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage’ to assess children’s development and progress and to plan for next steps in a child’s learning.

Plans for the week are on display in the tactile room and the paint room. Each week we have a particular area of focus and special adult-led activities are planned within this.

In addition to our main rooms we have a sensory room with a light tube and multi-sensory resources for treasure basket and heuristic play sessions. The sensory room is a lovely quiet, calm space in the Nursery.