Welcome to Saplings!
The children in Saplings are encouraged to learn through play and exploration, through being active, creative and thinking critically. The staff aim for the children to be inspired by their experiences; motivated by stimulating environments and equipment; fully engaged in their learning and, ultimately, to be empowered to continue to explore and learn themselves, independently. This is managed through carefully planned lessons and activities and opportunities for adult-led and adult- directed sessions as well as ample opportunity for child-initiated learning.
Please have a look at our video below for a flavour of what we do!
What sorts of thing do children learn about in Saplings?
In Saplings, we always use the children's interests to determine our learning topics and across the year, we investigate a wide range of different topics, such as animals, nature, festivals, toys, weather, ourselves, seasons, space, homes, plants, pirates, dinosaurs and more!
We also do muddy maths where we take our learning outside into our pre-school area and garden so we can learn about counting, number, shape, space and measure through nature. This lays the foundation for mathematical development.
We also do muddy maths where we take our learning outside into our pre-school area and garden so we can learn about counting, number, shape, space and measure through nature. This lays the foundation for mathematical development.
We engage with topics in different ways and do lots of learning outdoors, wherever possible. We also do lots of painting, crafting and making too. Natural Learning is a really important part of our week and the children love exploring the woods, using tools safely and having a warm hot chocolate at our two Natural Learning sites.
Transition into Hennock Primary School
Saplings class work closely with our Willows class, which have our Reception and Year 1 children. This means that the pre-schoolers get to know their future classmates and teacher, Miss Gentile, really well before they start in September.
The two classes work together as a foundation stage unit and are linked by a set of stairs, with our Willows Class upstairs and Saplings downstairs. We also have a shared EYFS outdoor area which has a brand new surface, purchased by our PTFA, and lots of outdoor equipment to share. Both the indoor and outdoors spaces have activities linked to the seven areas of learning in the EYFS.