Our Mission Statement

We want children to feel safe and happy in the absence of their parents, to recognise other adults as a source of respect, help and friendship, and to be able to share with their parents, the new learning experiences they have enjoyed at Donkey Field. Our main aims are to:
 

• Enhance the early skills and education of children aged 2½ to 5 years in a parent involved, community based group.
• Provide a safe, secure and stimulating environment.
• Work within a framework ensuring equal opportunities for all children and families.

We offer your child

• A well-planned play-based curriculum, working towards the achievement of the early learning goals in the foundation stage.
• Individual development records for the foundation stage of learning, based on ongoing assessment and observations.
• Special care and attention made possible by the high ratio of trained staff to children.
• Fun and friendship with children and other adults.

Key worker

Your child will be assigned a key worker who will be responsible for ensuring that your child’s individual needs are met. This will include helping both you and your child during the settling in period.

Playroom & garden

We have the use of Crawley Down C of E School's community room, called The Burleigh Room, which is named after the original infant school. We refer to it as our "playroom" and we feel this is fundamental in helping to provide quality care and education for the children. We have created a comfortable, pleasant environment for the children to come into, where their work is on display and everything around them is familiar.

Curriculum

It is the intention of The Donkey Field Pre-School to meet, through play, every child’s personal educational need using a full and varied curriculum in a warm, safe and stimulating environment. We are committed to establishing partnerships with parents/carers through consultation and participation, and will ensure that the children will be working towards the Early Learning Goals as stipulated by the Government.

The curriculum is organised around a theme or topic. Each half term the staff meet to discuss the needs of the children and plan the activities they will offer in order to help the children work towards the Early Learning Goals. We believe that children learn best when given first hand experiences and that they should be given the opportunity to explore and experiment, be encouraged to make decisions for themselves and have meaningful interaction with adults. To this end the children will be offered opportunities to develop their skills through supervised and structured play activities.

All children require support to learn - but different kinds and amounts depend on the child. At all times staff will be interacting with the child to aid areas of development.
Although our approach is to structure each session to facilitate learning through play, the children will be allowed to determine the pace of their learning.