Giraffe Room
3-4 Year Olds
Our Giraffe Room is a purpose built pre-school room, which offers morning and afternoon sessions for our 3-4 year olds.
We are open for pre-school from 9:00 am until 12:00 Midday for our morning session and 12:00 Midday until 15:00 pm for our afternoon pre-school session, Monday to Friday during term time.
For those children that attend the Ducklings Nursery class at St Georges Lower School , we collect and drop off our Giraffes at the end (mornings) and start (afternoons) times of these sessions.
We operate a lunch club facility for both morning and afternoon pre-school children which runs from approximately 11.40 for and children bring a packed lunch from home. Please note, to protect our children and staff with severe allergies, we are a NUT FREE setting and all of our children’s lunch bags are checked daily for nut products before entering the room for lunch club. Drinking water is available at all times, throughout the sessions and is also provided at lunch club.
We operate on a ratio of 1:8 staff to children in our Giraffe Room for our 3 and 4 year olds.
We are able to accommodate up to 15 children in Giraffe Room session.
All About Us
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework and operate a Key Person System. Each child has a Key Person who will work in partnership with our parents to build positive relationships and provide a nurturing and enabling environment to ensure all children receive the best possible care and education whilst attending our setting.
A typical morning in the Giraffe room would involve small group focused activities, which may include counting, sharing story books together, cooking activities, as well as many free flow physical and creative play opportunities.
For each of the children as a record of their time with us, we record their Learning and Development:
For preschool children a ‘Learning Journey’ is completed and for those children attending Ducklings we complete a ‘Readiness for school’ profile.
Learning Through Play
In the Giraffe room we operate free flow, so the children can play both indoors and outdoors.
Examples of our role play areas in our Giraffe Room include: The Gruffalo’s café, Dentist, hairdressers, ice cream shop, traditional home corner etc which all have dress up clothes/ hats, a selection of books, small world play and visuals and props to support imaginary play.
We provide large and small construction activities like building blocks, Duplo, Mobilo, a selection of puzzle boards, a malleable area for play dough, cooking activities and tuff tray activities with materials like rice, sand, water and ice. A selection painting resources or arts and crafts are also made available and children have access to self-select activity drawers.
Outdoor Fun
Our outside area is set up with sand and water play, loose parts play with tyres and planks, ride on’s, painting, a gardening area, a bench for outdoor reading, a sound wall, an outdoor kitchen and play house and a chalk board area.
Our children also have access to our Forest garden for free flow play when not being used for focused activities.
What Do We Get Up To?
Towards the end of each session a hand bell is rung for tidy up time. Children are encouraged to help tidy toys away. Once tidy up time has been completed, we follow the ‘My Smile’ programme which involves every child actively brushing their own teeth, as a group activity.
The children then join a short circle time together to finish each session which involves the children joining in stories and rhymes, sharing in their experiences and achievements, playing musical games together using props, puppets, song bags and musical instruments, as well as ring games with parachutes. All sessions finish with our special ‘Pre-School’ song, which is signed as well as sung by our children and Early Years practitioners.
We are proud to deliver focused group sessions for our Giraffe Room children which include our ‘Lift Off to Language’ for 3 & 4 years’ sessions, our Forest School Programme and Teddy Tennis sessions.
Snack Time
