At Forest Rock, we know your child’s first two years are critical for the development of their brain and for language development. Babies are active learners, immediately investigating the sights, sounds, and feel of the world. We provide babies with what they need: a safe world, rich with opportunities to actively explore, with touch books, songs, and a lot of listening and responding to their vocalisations and words.
Your baby will be cared for in a loving, home from home, environment in our bright and cheerful baby room. Our baby team will build a special relationship with you and your child and they will keep you up to date on daily achievements and milestones.
The children will move through to the Foxes room on or around their 2nd birthday, with some visits in the lead up to the transition. We are a tight knit team in general, so children are very familiar with all staff which makes transitions smoother.
In the Foxes room, we begin to encourage independence with close support. This looks like the children feeding themselves using cutlery successfully, beginning to dress themselves and introducing the idea of independent intimate care (e.g toileting and washing). The whole time, children know we are available for any assistance they may need.
We begin to include mild structure to the day but are hugely child-led in what our days look like and take into account children’s interests and developmental needs, as opposed to ‘topics’, so each day can vary widely. We focus on developing our gross and fine motor skills so spend plenty of time outside or getting creative (the messier, the better!).
We have a passion for seeing the world through children’s eyes, and actively encourage their curiosity around the world that we live in, how things happen and work and working on trial and error to successfully consolidate learning through play.
Our children move up to our pre-school room around their 3rd Birthday. We have the Hedgehogs who are the older cohort of children, leaving for school at the end of this academic year and the Hoglets who are the younger cohort of children and will have another year with us before they head off to school.
Our Curriculum is child-led and based around your child’s individual development needs and interests. It becomes more structured without losing the sense of awe, wonder and curiosity. We encourage the children to think for themselves, to find solutions to problems, develop independence and be respectful individuals. They help care for our nursery environment.
The children participate in small group activities to encourage turn-taking and develop communication and numeracy skills. We also enjoy large group activities such as yoga, dancing and games.
We have a sensory/creative room where the children are able to be fearlessly creative and we encourage their ideas and artistic expression.
Our safe, enclosed outdoor ‘room’ has been carefully designed to provide a fun and welcoming atmosphere for our children to learn and explore, and encourages the children’s learning into nature and outdoor activities. We ensure all areas of learning are represented in the outdoor room and that our children feel trusted and respected and learn to engage in a range of motor activities/skills such as running, jumping, crawling and rolling. We encourage more flexibility in their outdoor play with balls, bean bags and hoops.
Quiet areas within the playground will ensure children can have a safe space where they can feel calmer and have a place away from the busy activities.