Our child-led ethos is inspiring, creative, and meaningful. We are passionate about learning and are determined to give our children the best opportunities possible. Using natural, open-ended resources, we respond ‘in the moment’ to a child’s learning needs. This enhances a child’s learning and scaffolds their play and development. With all our activities we encourage children to take risks and challenge themselves safely. Invitations to play are added to entice and promote a child’s natural curiosity and with that comes questions and the opportunity for our staff to extend a child’s learning.  

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We have a trained forest school leader who takes groups of children to offsite forest school site along with another practitioner. Forest School offers a learner centred approach, where participants can learn through self-directed play and exploration. Children who come to the Forest School will be given the opportunity to develop their curiosity, confidence, self-esteem, creativity, empathy, communication skills, knowledge of the natural environment and ability to assess risk. 

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As well as forest school we offer a range of enhanced activities that children have the opportunity to enjoy at nursery- including animal care, woodwork, yoga and wellness, boogie beat, cooking club and gardening club- which give the opportunity to learn about  healthy eating, the environment caring for others and animals , and is a big part in supporting their all-round health- including emotional and mental health of themselves and their friends 

We also provide heuristic play sessions to our younger children - heuristic play is a type of play where the child uses their own imagination to develop ideas of ways to use open ended objects. 

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At Orchidale we encourage our children to be independent learners in every aspect of their day this includes mealtimes. Our staff team ensure these times are relaxing and are more of a social event where children can reflect with the staff on what they have doing throughout the day. Children can practice self serving and are encouraged to understand the process, from setting the table, pouring their own water, self serving meals, scraping plates and cleaning up after themselves. Our children take pride in learning these life skills which in turn builds self-esteem and confidence. 

 

We have such pride that our children are not only challenged, happy, thoughtful, and imaginative they are full of natural Curiosity and independence which is paramount to our overall ethos.