Health and Wellbeing

​​Ensuring your child feels safe, happy and secure is our absolute priority and the Nursery team pride themselves on providing a nurturing, empowering and caring environment. Whether it is staff offering a reassuring cuddle or quietly taking time to explore different feelings with your child in a cosy area of the room or offering sensitive support when they are experiencing heightened emotions, staff work closely with families to ensure all of the children’s needs are being met. In addition to the Nursery team, there are also a number of staff throughout school who are able to support children and families in very specific ways. If things become a little tough, please do not hesitate to speak to a member of the team if you are worried or have any concerns.

The purpose of health and wellbeing is to help every child feel cared for and valued as an individual. Learning about health and wellbeing will help them cope with uncertainties in life, have confidence to try new and different things and make the most of opportunities that come along. It also aims to promote resilience, equality, independence and importantly, compassion, enabling our children to thrive in an increasingly fast-paced, ever-changing world.

Health and wellbeing permeates all that we do and teaches your child about:

• mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing (incorporating P.E and Forest Kindergarten)
• physical activity and health, (incorporating P.E and Forest Kindergarten)
• food and health
• planning for choices and changes
• substance misuse and relationships
• sexual health and relationships.

This area of the curriculum offers our Nursery children a foundation which is then built upon within our Learning for Life (LL) curriculum within the Junior School. This ensures that our children develop the knowledge and understanding, skills, capabilities and attributes which they need for mental, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing, both now and in the future. Our children are also encouraged to develop various skills and attributes through a ‘rights-based’ approach focusing on universal human rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), as well as responsibilities towards others and consent.

Health and wellbeing

In order for the children to explore aspects such as friendship, responsibility and changing emotions, staff provide daily opportunities for the children to share their feelings and ideas within a climate of respect and trust. Focusing on a wide range of words associated with feelings, we assist the children in developing the ability to recognise, understand, take care of and appropriately express their emotions.

By ‘talking and teaching’ through stories, activities and games, we nurture, support and encourage our children’s emotional literacy so that they can learn to express themselves appropriately. We also use emotional literacy to empower our children and help them to develop deep respect and understanding of the emotions of others.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a powerful tool that supports children in calming themselves, focusing their attention and interacting effectively with others, which are all critical skills for effective functioning in school and throughout life.

Incorporating mindfulness into education has been linked to improved academic, social and emotional learning because Mindfulness strengthens underlying developmental processes such as focus, self-regulation and resilience.

The Nursery children are introduced to Mindfulness in a variety of ways both indoors and out as we aim to make a positive difference to our children’s health and wellbeing.

‘This is Me’

In addition to the information which is provided by parents at the beginning of the session in our ‘Getting to Know You’ booklets, every child is given the opportunity to share aspects of their lives that are particularly important to them. This often naturally occurs throughout the session but to ensure all of our children can be involved we offer an ‘This is Me’ focus, which links with our whole school ‘Learning for Life’ and RSHP programme. For example, traditions in their family, significance of their culture, people who are important to them and things they enjoy doing are shared. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the diversity in our school community and helps our children develop a better and richer understanding of themselves, others and the wider world.

Throughout the session the children will also be introduced to a variety of religious festivals and celebrations. These might also have significance to some of their peers in class and as a result offer meaningful contexts for learning. Some examples might include Diwali, Advent, Holi or Chinese New Year. We aim to support understanding and foster respect of religious diversity and religious and non-religious viewpoints.

Safety Week

Throughout your child’s time in Nursery we support the children’s understanding about to keep themselves safe in school, online, in the home and whilst out and about. This is built upon during our ‘Safety Week’ focus where the children also learn about the emergency services and the people that can help your child ‘keep safe’.

Citizenship

This area aims to enable our children to make a positive difference to the world by putting their beliefs and values into action through learning about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Nursery children are encouraged to care for their environment and begin to develop knowledge, skills and understanding to play a full part in society as active and responsible global citizens.