Age Groups at Three Bears
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Baby Bears (0-2 years)
What is our Baby Bears age range?
0-22months (based also on stages of development)
Who are our Baby Bears Educators?
Molly - Qualified Teacher Status, Level 3 Early Years Educator
Rachel - Level 3 Early Years Educator
Kiera - Working toward Early Years Educator qualification
What does our curriculum, learning and development look like in Baby Bears?
Our Baby Bear’s routine is underpinned by the importance of attachment. We ensure that we prioritise forming strong relationships between each baby and their key person from day one at nursery, as well as strong positive relationships with the other educators in Baby Bears. This ensures that we are setting the premise to be a home-away-from home from the start, because a child who feels safe and and secure with strong attachments has a high level of wellbeing and therefore is able to thrive! Personal, Social and Emotional Development is the first of our areas of focus in Baby Bears and forming strong attachments enables us to work toward the branches of this, making relationships, self-confidence and self-regulation.
Our Baby Bears second area of learning that we focus on is Physical Development. Our babies use their climbing gym to develop gross motor movements, explore risky play in a safe and secure setting, work on self confidence, dexterity and awareness of their bodies in space. They explore art, sand and water as whole body experiences, engaging in both vertical and horizontal mark making. They explore gross motor movement and start to learn to grasp resources both indoors and out.
They have a den and cosy spaces to retreat to for comfort and calm times, and enjoy shimmery fabrics, sensory blocks and balls, lights and sounds to stimulate use of their senses.
Finally in Baby Bears, we focus on Communication and Language and use a wealth of nursery rhymes and simple books to do this. The curriculum throughout nursery is heavily underpinned by the use of story and rhyme. When communicating with our babies we ensure we are in close proximity at eye level, that they can see our mouths move and that we talk calmly and in short sentences to begin to scaffold early talk, understanding, listening and attention. We mirror sounds they make as they coo and babble, and as they begin to form recognisable sounds and words, we mirror the correct pronunciation back to them.
What does our daily routine look like in Baby Bears?
Here at nursery we know each baby’s has an individual routine and work to recreate this from home as much as possible and merge it into our nursery day.
Big Bears (2-4 Years)
What is our Big Bears age range?
22-34months (based also on stages of development)
Who are our Big Bears Educators?
Maria - Level 3 Early Years Educator
Keira - Level 3 Early Years Educator
Ruby - Working toward Early Years Educator qualification
Ellie - Working toward Early Years Educator qualification
What does our curriculum, learning and development look like in Big Bears?
In Big Bears our curriculum expands to encompass both the prime and specific areas of the Birth to 5 Matters national curriculum. Our environments are set up to facilitate continuous provision. This means that our toddlers can engage in meaningful child-led play, directed to cater for their age and stage of development. Our skilled educators join our toddlers, on their level and create teachable moments based around the child’s play and fascinations at that given moment in time. The educators are knowledgable as to each child’s next steps and cater for these through the child’s play.
Communication and language is supported as we champion the use of Makaton and visual symbols to create opportunities for early talk and scaffold this. We encourage the use of books and rhymes as we did in Baby Bears and place stories in all areas of play both to prompt imagination and to bring in new and relevant language.
We value promoting independence in Big Bears, the children have their own water bottles with their photos to be able to recognise and reach for when needed, they self serve at mealtimes and wash their hands each time too, singing their special song as they do. Children are encouraged to wipe their own noses and check in the mirror to ensure they are all clean. The children start to become ready to toilet train and are given time and opportunities to use the potty and progress at their own pace whilst being scaffolded in their progress by their key person.
The children explore actively, spending great spans of the day outdoors, engaging in large scale risky play on obstacle courses, mixing potions in the water tray, emptying and filling containers in the sand, exploring different art media and learning to make a tricyle move.
The children are exposed to early maths and early literacy, with use of numbers 1-10, shapes, more or less, environmental sounds, rhymes and mark making on a small and large scale. They start to learn about our outside world, the community around us, people who help us and nature too.
What does our daily routine look like in Big Bears?
In Big Bears every day is different! We spend lots of our day in the outdoors, exploring maths, literacy, art, gross and fine motor development, friendships, language and understanding and emotional co-regulation.
Description Title
What is our Preschool age range?
34months - 4 years
Who are our Preschool Educators?
Charlotte - Level 3 Early Years Educator, about to complete Forest School Leader qualification
Megan - Level 3 Early Years Educator
What does our curriculum, learning and development look like in Preschool?
Our children in Preschool are fully now immersed in their early educational journey in all 7 areas of learning and through child led play, supported by activities planned each week by our experienced educators, they are encouraged to engage actively in their learning, play and explore, collaborate, create and think critically.
The children explore letters and sounds, carrying out listening walks in the outdoor environment and when engaging in mark making, play-dough and sand play are encouraged to form and recognise patterns, progressing to letter formation.
When they arrive to nursery each morning they self-register, placing their name and picture card into the emotion basket (relating to the Colour Monster), to share how they are feeling today, they talk about why, and with the support of their key person, they progress from co- to self-regulation, and support their peers too.
The children explore capacity, spacial awareness, number, measure and shapes through small and large scale construction, in the sand and water, in our giant dolls house, as they self serve at meal times, as they run, jump, crawl and explore outdoors and in so many more open ended opportunities throughout the day.
They check in daily on the weather, explore different cultures from around the world and what is happening in our local and global communities. They talk about who is in their family and what makes them special, and they learn that they are each unique in their identities and enjoy to share this with their friends.
Their language grows further as they engage in meaningful conversations with their peers and educators as they play.
They practice their 3 finger grip and develop grip strength to write and draw using resources such as tweezers, play moulds and threading to name just a few. This also improves hand-eye co-ordination.
These are just a small summary of ways in which we prepare each unique child for the next stage of their early education journey.
What does our daily routine look like in Preschool?
Although this age group sees a great progression in terms of depth’s reached in each area of learning, each day is still very much led by the children. Play is child-led and activities planned and invitations are based around their interest whilst also incorporating all areas of learning. The children sit and say good morning to one another and talk about the day ahead. Again, no two days are the same and each day the children’s imaginations, friendships and adult scaffolding takes them through a learning journey.