A Day at Puffins

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At Puffins, we support children’s learning and development with a mixture of child led and adult led activities.

Our activities take into account seasonal celebrations, cultural events and spontaneous learning opportunities but, most importantly, the interests and experiences of the children themselves. We utilise in the moment planning to extend activities within the children's interest and ideas in that moment to be able to effectively provide teachable moments working towards each child's next steps.

“Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves.” ~ Jean Piaget.  

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We explore our emotions daily and encourage independence throughout the day with routines and taking manageable risks.

"the more risk you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves" - Roald Dahl

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We are fortunate enough to have the use of three indoor areas that the children have free flow access to. In the “Kitchen” we have a variety of messy play where we make our own playdough at the malleable station, create works of art at the painting wall and we explore different sensory activities daily, we also cook up some tasty treats in the kitchen.

In the “Physical Room” we regularly change the experience for the children. We utilise this space mostly for physical activities for example we have soft play, sensory exploration and giant magnetic tiles. We also use the space for yoga and other exercises but the most requested activity is turning on the disco lights and getting our dancing moves on to a range of different child themed learning songs in a Puffin disco. More recently we introduced 'Puffin Town' into this rotation of activities where the children get to have their own little town with their own supermarket, dentist, hospital, police station, fire station along with other role play areas to really spark them imaginations. 

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The “Main Room” has a home corner with a kitchen, washing machine and fridge freezer which we have found sparks real meaningful conversations with children as they compare it to the modern day life that they all know. We have babies to dress and take care of and a dressing up station that really encourages  creativeness and imagination.  We have the calm and cosy book corner with books of all kinds to explore alone, with friends or with an adult, we have a space for small world and construction areas where the children can create their own small world play using their imaginations with the accessible resources, as well as a craft areas to  work them fine motor skills. We provide scissors, glue a range of media and colours for drawing and different textures to explore and use to create with.

"Every child is an artist." - Pablo Picasso

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Outside we make use of the ramp creating a free flow environment where the children have access to their coats before venturing outside to explore the range of resources we put out there including but definitely not limited to; a mud kitchen set up where the children use playdough, foam, water, mud, sand, leaves, twigs, ice (and depending on when mother nature delivers even snow) to get creative in the outside kitchen. We have access to welly boots, rain coats and umbrellas so not even the rain stops us!

We regularly take trips around town exploring our environment, to the library, to the park, use the tennis courts, visit the duck pond, visit the fire station (when invited as them guys can be really busy being heros!) and we really like to get involved with our local community with strong connections with a local care home, attending armistice day service and other local events.

We have our own allotment which we grow our own fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers at and it is also set up with learning opportunities through play and exploration with a bug hotel, a playhouse, mud kitchen and areas for us to dig and explore.

We provide a healthy and independent mid morning and afternoon snack with milk and water available  and the children have free access to water all day.

 

You can follow some of our adventures on our Facebook page  

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