At Monkey Puzzle we provide opportunities to work on a range of school readiness skills in all rooms ensuring it is age appropriate. We do this in a range of ways such as having a routine, making meal times a social occasion and encouraging children to be as independent as they can.

We also support children by providing opportunities to be inquisitive and ensure we offer lots of enriching activities to build children’s confidence to explore new experiences.

We work in partnership with parents to be in tune with children’s home interests, celebrations and big moments for our children, therefore, the learning is personal which helps children to feel included in the nursery community and makes their learning relevant to them. In doing this we give the children the tools to take on the classroom and the world! We believe that we are not just guiding the children to be school ready but life ready.

Transitions to School

We take pride in building partnerships with our local schools. We visited one of our main private schools to work together to ensure the children are equipped to be successful and confident learners on entry to the school. The school provided a list of expectations that they felt would benefit the children to have learnt prior to entry to the school. We implemented this within our everyday routine and added it to our school readiness programme to enable every child to learn the skills they needed to transition to school. I requested photographs of the new school, the new teachers and the classrooms specific to the reception classes. The school sent through a presentation of photographs that linked to the child’s first year and we added this to our book area for us all to visit at key times during each week.

This all had a positive impact on the children transitioning to school as they had learnt the skills required and were familiar with their new environment from the photographs provided at nursery. We will visit the school soon to see how the children settled into school and remain in partnership for years to come.