Play is a very powerful tool that promotes children’s development and learning. It allows children to make important connections about what they know, and helps them to celebrate what they can do, building confidence and self-esteem.

Our ‘Image of the Child’ is that all children are competent and confident learners, and naturally inquisitive. We believe that children are fascinating to observe, have an unlimited potential and that they require the love of attentive, caring adults and a well thought out environment in order for them to reach their full potential. We see children as individuals who need to be listened to carefully to ensure we can meet their needs and passions for learning. We also believe that children achieve best, when they are enjoying themselves, therefore we value the importance of learning through play, initiated by the individual child.

Although we do pre-plan some activities for the children, based on observations of children’s interests and stages of development, we recognise that children will learn most from their free play and initiated games. Therefore we allocate the majority of the Nursery day for this and make thorough written records of the children’s play, and evaluate what learning is taking place, which will then influence our pre-planned activities and projects. The pre-planned activities and projects will not be forced upon any child, and may be replaced by another spontaneous activity or experience, if there is something more appropriate to the children’s interests on the day.

We all know how much more easier it is to learn something, when it is something of a particular interest to you!

Treasure Baskets and heuristic Play

‘We can never truly know what it is like to bite into a ripe juicy peach until we have actually taken the bite for ourselves. Similarly what do the concepts cool and smooth, prickly and rough actually mean unless we have caressed a pebble, picked up a pine cone or fingered the bark of a gnarled tree?’

(Goldschmied, 1990)  

Treasure Baskets and Heuristic Play provide opportunities for children to explore and experience a variety of different natural and every day objects. Through this exploration children can experiment with the different textures, develop the use of all of their senses and begin to learn different concepts, such as big and small, up and down, in and out etc.

Examples of objects used in Treasure Baskets and/or Heuristic Play:

• Wooden curtain rings
• Corks
• Wooden dolly pegs
• Wooden spoons  
• Fir cones
• Wicker balls
• CD’s
• Shells
• Sponges
• Bunches of keys
• A variety of containers, bottles and tins

And the list goes on…!