Welcome to Hackenthorpe Hall.

Bumble Bees Playroom

Bumblebees is a preschool 3-5 year room, consisting of Ladybirds and Dragonflies. The room offers more complex activities and planning and the structure is more pronounced to help with the transition from Nursery to School.

Continuous provision areas together with stimulating activities are planned to encourage understanding through logic, reasoning and free thought.

Story-time, singing-time and group-time are more structured to encourage listening, concentration and communication and language skills. Group-time may consist of registration or show and tell sessions, whereby children talk about what they have made or done. Sometimes children bring in toys and items of interest from home to show and talk about at group-time. All children are encouraged to participate, supporting confidence and self-esteem, always tailoring participation to the individual child’s needs and interests. Mark making skills are further encouraged, offering name cards to copy or to mark make on. Mark making opportunities as in all rooms are evident in all areas of the provision, further encouraging early emergent writing. Children’s personal skills are further developed in Bumblebees, getting them ‘ready for school’.

With this in mind we work closely with the feeder schools, having meetings to discuss the term ‘Ready for School’. This has been invaluable and we have followed advice from the teachers and have introduced activities into the planning, such as name cards to encourage name recognition and emergent name writing or mark making. There is more emphasis on listening and attention activities, which are known to support children with early reading skills. Continued support with managing own hygiene and personal skills, such as putting on and fastening coats and shoes. All these areas have been highlighted as important to successful and smooth transitions for children into their new schools.

All the staff are committed to ensuring your child is ‘ready for school’, so they leave Hackenthorpe Hall Nursery well rounded, confident, happy, independent individuals ready to embrace new experiences and learning.