Early Years
Dorking Nursery School (part of Dorking Nursery School Sure Start Children’s Centre)
We provide high quality nursery education and care for 2 - 5 year olds
Dorking Nursery School was founded in 1939 and has long been at the heart of family life in Dorking. It has always excelled in Early Years education, with consistently good Ofsted reports. Since September 2008 we have provided nursery provision for children from 2 years old. We are especially proud of our most recent Ofsted report, which rated both the 2-3s and the 3-5s nurseries as outstanding... "Happy and extremely well behaved children enjoy their time at school and achieve extremely well. Children attain the standards they are capable of in each area of learning because the staff have high expectations and know the children well." Ofsted 2010
The Early Years Foundation Stage is the statutory curriculum framework for children from birth to five years. Our nurseries adhere to these principles in their curriculums.
It has the following principles:
- Every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self assured
- Children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person
- The environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children's development and learning
- Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates and all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.
We know that in the nurseries the children learn best when:
- They are happy and secure
- They are interested in what they are doing and they can relate it to their own experiences
- They are involved in play and hands on, real life experiences
- They socialise with other children and adults
- They play with children of a similar age
- They have free access to high quality outdoor and indoor play
- They are given opportunities to take risks, problem solve and make mistakes without fear of failure
- They are given uninterrupted time to focus
- They are involved in a balance of child-initiated and adult-initiated activities
- They have access to a broad curriculum covering all the areas of learning
- They are offered a range of learning styles to meet their individual needs
- Staff are involved in their learning and use their skills to support and extend the child's learning in the most appropriate way for that child at that moment
- Staff know the child well and have a good understanding of each child's level of development and learning style
- Parents and staff share information and work together for the benefit of the child