At Pentland pre-school we provide a safe and nurturing environment in which children can experiment, explore and grow in their own creative ways.
Our pre-school is situated in a purpose built setting within the 0-19 Family Hub on Ochill Terrace, next to the main primary school building. We offer both funded and paid for 2 year old places. The pre-school also provides both 15 and 30 hour funded places for three and four year olds. The 15-hour places are all AM sessions and the 30-hour places are full days. Paid for afternoon sessions are also available, for those parents that don’t qualify for a 30hours place. To give our parents flexibility and provide support for working families, wrap around care is available from 7.30-5.30 each day for all children from 2 years upwards. We believe that the sooner children start in our nurturing and enabling setting, the greater impact it has on their learning and development. Building strong relationships from the start by welcoming all children into our ‘Pentland family’ is a priority for all staff and leaders within the pre-school.
The intent of our EYFS curriculum is to ensure our children develop the necessary skills, knowledge and attitude to achieve fulfilling lives. We instill core values into our children that help them to grow and reach their full potential and have high aspirations for their own futures, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences. Pentland EYFS is the start of our children’s journey and we provide them with all the skills, experiences and nurturing that they need to become a ‘school ready’, resilient learner. Our EYFS curriculum is underpinned by the PRIME areas and centered around communication, language and literacy (CLL). We believe that it is essential for all children to develop their speaking skills through quality interactions with skilled practitioners to grow and develop an enriched vocabulary which they understand. Through exciting experiences, a wealth of stories, songs and poems, children make good progress within CLL which gives them the skills they need to become confident talkers and keen early readers.
We follow the EYFS statutory Framework and use ‘Development matters’ combined with our own expertise for assessment milestones. We use ‘Evidence Me’ to capture evidence, inform each child’s next steps and to keep track of children’s progress. When children start the pre-school, we follow the Leuven scales to ensure children are settled before using baseline assessments and observations to build a picture of each individual child’s staring points across all 17 areas. Information from previous settings, childminders and parents is also taken into consideration when completing baselines. We monitor the children’s development and progress , through observations, Read Write Inc phonics assessments and most importantly, teacher knowledge every half term. This information helps us to plan effectively for each individual child. We have regular meetings with parents, including a home visit before each child starts and a settling in meeting within a child’s first term. We also moderate, across the trust with other experienced and skilled EYFS practitioners to ensure that our judgments are fair and correct. Attainment, progress and well-being are reported to parents throughout the year for each child with opportunities to discuss any barriers or challenges they may be facing and to offer support, as we believe that early identification and intervention is key for a child to be happy and therefore thrive.