Happy Stars Pre-school & After School Club
At Happy Stars we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage document. Our practitioners support children to play, make friends, develop and learn. They have great fun, exploring and creating, indoors and outside. They gain independence and confidence and their natural curiosity is encouraged at all times.
We have 2 rooms downstairs, the first if for our 2 ½ year olds; the Red Stars and the other is for our Blue Stars. The upstairs of the building is home to our Junior Stars. All of our children share our large garden and we regularly go for walks around our local area.
All children will be given the opportunity to play outside throughout most of the day whatever the weather.
It is important that you dress your child for nursery appropriately: warm clothes and waterproof coat when it’s cold and wet; sun hat and sun screen when it’s sunny.
Children get wet, muddy and messy when they play outside. We provide protective clothing for them to wear, including wellington boots, although you can provide these things for your child if you wish.
We teach children how to minimise how messy they get and they do get better at this as they get older, but it’s part of their learning and development – you can’t expect them not to get messed up playing in mud.
We will not compromise on allowing children to play outdoors as we believe it to be an essential component of young children’s learning and development.
Children must be allowed to experience the world around them in a full, messy, muddy, wet environment if they are to make useful meaning of it.
Getting wet does not cause us to catch a cold. If the cold virus is around, we will pick it up regardless of whether we are wet or dry.
Red Stars
Within the Red Stars room children are developing their independence, forming friendships and gaining a greater awareness of 'this is me!'. We follow children's individual personal care routines and there is a cosy area for children to have a rest or sleep. Children take part in lots of small group activities to develop their communication and interaction.
Blue Stars
Our Blue Stars are supported to recognize the importance of keeping healthy and understanding the significance of healthy and safe practices. This is embedded within our daily practice and practitioners reinforce these positive behaviours through praise, encouragement and being positive role models. Our children develop skills to enable them to value themselves and others, to be creative and resourceful and enthusiastic to learn.
Junior Stars
We provide after school and holiday care for children aged 5-12 years. We collect from many of our local schools and have a good transition process in place.
Our Junior Stars are fully involved in planning their daily activities during non-term times such as days out to the seaside, den building in the woods and bowling.
