Animal Encounters!

By Miss Belzer

Headmistress

We had a fantastic experience with Arc Farm on Monday 11th March 2024. The children met rabbits, guinea pigs, a tortoise, a miniature door mouse, a lizard, a hedgehog, an owl and even a Chinchilla! Nikayou the Labrador was very gentle and friendly and she received lots of pats, hugs and tummy rubs from the children.

Our ducklings also had a fantastic week at Broadhurst. They have been swimming, playing up and down slippery slides and snuggling in little hands holding them. The children have thoroughly enjoyed watching the ducklings eating, drinking and growing bigger every day.

 

Forest School

By Miss Chloe

Class 3 Teacher

Forest School is an approach that specialises in learning within nature and aims to develop children’s confidence and self-esteem. This educational approach has many benefits including improving physical health, building language and communication and improving well-being. Forest School helps children accomplish more than they would inside a classroom. It is child centred through both planned and child initiated activities and allows for safe risk taking. This, in turn, encourages children to discover their independence.

At school, the children have begun making visits to our new Enchanted Forest area and have enjoyed nature crafts including weaving with natural materials and making bird feeders.

 

Risky Play in Early Years
By Miss Luna
Class 4 Teacher

children in a playground
Risky play refers to those activities that aim to challenge children’s physical development. More specifically, it entails activities that involve gross motor balancing such as climbing in, through, under or over apparatus. Over the course of generations, children’s engagement in risky play is diminishing due to generational trends, parental styles and societal concerns. However, there are countless reasons why risky play should always be encouraged. Children should have frequent opportunities to engage in such activities not only to benefit their physical development but also for their cognitive, social and language skills. Engaging in risky play, particularly during early childhood, can be thrilling and memorable, providing a rush of adrenaline that energises and excites. Participating in risky play helps children develop critical thinking skills by encouraging them to assess situations, consider consequences, and navigate risks safely. This early exposure fosters a foundation for effective risk management, enabling children to understand how to keep themselves safe. Additionally, risky play supports self-driven exploration, encouraging children to develop the skills necessary for lifelong learning. By navigating risks independently, children gain confidence in their abilities, judgment, and social interactions. This form of play also promotes pushing the boundaries of physical development.

 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
By Miss Belzer
Headmistress

children playing a fishing game

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) involves helping children develop a positive sense of themselves and others in order to form positive relationships. Children develop respect for others, social skills and learn how to manage their feelings. They also understand appropriate behaviour in groups and learn to have confidence in their own abilities.

This area of the Early Years curriculum develops children’s positive sense of themselves. It teaches about having respect for oneself and others, developing social skills and a good attitude to learning.

PSED is made up of these aspects:
Self Confidence and Self Awareness – children grow confidence to try new activities and to speak in a familiar group. They say why they like some activities more than others, talk about their ideas and will choose the resources they need for their chosen activities.
Managing Feelings and Behaviour – children experience about how they and others express feelings and learn about their own and others behaviour. Children work as part of a group or class, and understand to follow the rules. They adjust their behaviour to different situations, and take changes of routine in their stride.
Making Relationships – children play cooperatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their activity. They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.

children enjoying ice cream

Montessori Activities At Home
By Miss Magdalena
Class 5 Teacher

Curiosity Baskets at Broadhurst school are inspired by many Montessori ideas. They can also be set up at home and can be fantastic for keeping energetic kids calm. For example:
• Peeling and cutting bananas
• Washing dishes
• Pouring water into a cup for drinking
• Watering plants
• Setting the table
• Serving breakfast e.g. scooping cereal into a bowl

Useful Tips:
• Think about the steps, not just the end result
• Find baskets, trays, and simple containers to organize items for your child to help with
• Make it accessible and presentable for your child

Benefits:
• Your child learns to help at home and working together creates a strong bond.
• There are many chances to learn new words and talk about what you are doing
• Your child learns new things, becomes more independent, and feels like they can do things on their own

 

Deconstructed Role Play
By Mrs Roberts
Deputy Headmistress

Deconstructed Role Play is a designated area that contains a variety of different objects with no set purpose or goal. It encourages children to use their imagination and interpret objects according to their interests and lines of enquiry.
What are the benefits of deconstructed role play?
• Deconstructed role play does not limit imagination
• It encourages free thinking and the sharing of ideas
• It can be enhanced easily and used in many different ways
• It is not prescribed and allows children to nurture their interests

How can you set up a deconstructed role play?
Have you ever bought your child a toy and they have had just as much fun playing with the box it came in? Well, deconstructed role play is all about giving children objects that can be used in many ways.
You could use:
• Different-sized cardboard boxes
• Different-sized cloth and material
• Pipes and tubes
• Tins, cans and containers
• Baskets and buckets

How do we enhance deconstructed role play in the classroom?
We enhance deconstructed role play with different items to extend and invite children to play. For example, adding dolls, vehicles, containers or natural materials. The enhancements change the direction of the play and create a sense of excitement each time.

 

Independence
By Miss Samara
Class 6 Teacher

Independence is a vital skill that needs to be nurtured early in life, as this way children are being shown the importance of being self-sufficient from a young age. In fact, many children demonstrate the desire to be independent with no encouragement from an adult. As a parent it is sometimes hard to sit and watch your child struggle and to maintain your patience so as not to intervene, especially when the child doing the task themselves takes more time. However, this is when it is crucial to remember that opportunities to be independent are immensely important for building a sense of self and self-esteem as well as developing perseverance.

With this in mind, a great starting point to foster independence is to set and stick to a familiar routine. This way your child will know what to expect and what events come next. For example, if you have the shoes and coat you are planning for your child to wear by the door, this will signal to your child the expectation to put these on. Eventually, the aim is for your child to do this task with no prompting required. Once your child can complete a few simple tasks independently, more expectations can be added.

Other ways to foster independence in your child is to have them help with daily routines such as mealtimes. Children are more than capable of feeding themselves from an early age. In fact, self-feeding will likely also encourage your child to taste new things on their own. Additionally, children can be encouraged to take on responsibility with certain self-help skills, such as, hand washing, dressing and self serving at snack times.

Another opportunity to develop independence in children is to provide them with choice; this certainly does not mean they have free rein. By offering your child two options that are acceptable to you, or by having them assist in the decision-making process, your child has the chance to assert their autonomy in an appropriate manner.

At school we nurture children’s independence by children putting on their own coat, changing into wellington boots, washing hands, using cutlery, accessing classroom resources, choosing their own activities and looking at story books.

 

Adventures and Experiences at Broadhurst
By Miss Belzer
Headmistress

For anyone considering St Christina’s or The Village Girls School please find below information about their upcoming open days. These schools are a great non assessment school option.

The Village Girls School, formerly The Village Prep School, will be expanding to secondary provision from September 2024. They will have open mornings on Friday 23rd February and Friday 22nd March between 9:30am-12noon. Please find below a link to their secondary school prospectus:

https://thevillageprepschool.com/senior-school-prospectus/

This week the Nursery children visited Waitrose on their first school trip. It was impressive to see our Broadhurst School children composing themselves in public and displaying their manners in spite of their excitement and enthusiasm. The children absolutely loved weighing their piece of fruit, printing their price sticker and taking it to the checkout. In addition, the children went on a treasure hunt around the store and found the bakery as well as the cheese and fish and counters. Back at school, the children made delicious fruit salad with their chosen fruits.

Celebrations for Luna New Year were happening across all our classes and our school has been vibrant in red this week. Activities have included dragons crafts, sensory play with red and yellow rice, experimenting with chopsticks, dragon and lion dances and reading the Zodiac story. We wish all our families celebrating, a very Happy Luna New Year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Successful Storytime
By Mrs Roberts
Deputy Headmistress

National Storytelling Week is an opportune time to consider what makes a successful story time and how we can nurture, from an early age, a true love of reading. There is much more to reading than phonics, although phonics is essential for decoding and blending words. Additionally, we must create wonderment and joy around reading from an early age. Stories support children to grow vocabulary, increase attention, extend understanding and foster imagination. A quality story time will have many components and considerations, some are listed below.
• Take into consideration the book and if it sparks interest.
• Pre-teach any content in the story that a child may not understand. For example, an unfamiliar object or word throughout the book that needs explanation or demonstration.
• Include incidental teaching as you read, refer to the parts of the book, for example, the spine, blurb, illustrations and the author.
• Encourage participation including joining in with repeated refrains and acting out parts of the story.
• Predict what might happen next or ponder an alternative ending.
• Follow up on the story, create activities and further learning to extend the experience.
• Revisit and repeat favourite stories and discover something new each time.
• Finally, story time is an excellent way to connect in this busy world, take your time, get comfortable and enjoy the adventure that is reading.

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.”
J.K Rowling