Pre-School

Welcome to our Information Page about Pre-School Foundation Stage at Robert Wilkinson Primary Academy

 We hope that you find the information below useful.  If you have any questions which are not answered below, please do not hesitate to contact us.

You can use your 2 year old and 3 year old funding with us.

Our sessions for the rest of this term and next year are filling up quickly so please don’t miss out.  Please ask for an Admissions form from the School Reception.

Thank you for considering Robert Wilkinson Primary Academy Preschool. Please find some general information about our provision which now consists of two class bases known as Seedlings and Saplings.

Visits

We welcome prospective parents and children to come and visit us. If you would like to arrange a visit, please call the school office (01904 806414) and make an appointment.

Transition Visits

We have dates where you and your child come and visit and play to help with their settling in. You are welcome to stay with your child, or drop them off. We are entirely flexible and are more than happy to work with you on whatever you think would be best for your child.
You are very welcome to attend as many of the transition visits as you would like to. We would ask, however, that you let us know which ones you will be attending so that we can ensure we have extra staff in if necessary. The dates will be made available to you when you have registered your child.

Classes

We now have two Preschool classes:
Saplings – This class is for children who are aged 3 or 4 and who will start school the next academic year in September. This is a teacher led provision designed to help children become ready to start school the next September. This class is in the main school building next to our Reception classes.
Seedlings – This class is for children who are 2 or 3 years old and NOT due to start school the next academic year. This class is in the Preschool building next to the main school office.

Parent Communication

We strongly believe in building up strong relationships with parents and members of staff will be available to speak to you when you drop off and collect your child. Please feel free to speak to us about anything that you feel we need to know about your child – achievements, family news, how they are feeling etc. All of this information is important to us so that we can know and understand your child fully. We love to share news about your child, too, so we may pass onto you what they have been doing during the day and what kind of day they have had. We also share information about what we have been doing and reminders via the Parents App Parent Hub. Please follow us Twitter to have a window into day to day life at Robert Wilkinson.

If ever you need to speak to a member of staff in confidence, please ask and we will find a quiet space to speak with you.

Fees and Funding Information

Children are eligible to join our Preschool from the age of 2 years old.
All children aged 3 or 4 are entitled to 15 hours free childcare for 38 weeks a year.
Children aged 2 from eligible families are entitled to 15 hours free childcare.
Children aged 3 or 4 from eligible families are entitled to 30 hours free childcare.
Parents may also pay for sessions using Childcare Vouchers.

Funding may be used to pay for up to 15 or 30 hours, depending on eligibility. Any hours above this amount will need to be paid for. When children are not eligible for funding, sessions are paid for by the hour.

Our session rates are:

2 year olds – £ 7.50 per hour
3 & 4 year olds – £5.60 per hour

Invoices are sent out each month and we do ask that they are paid in full and promptly. Please see Terms and Conditions for more information.

For further details about free childcare places please go to the Childcare Choices website

https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/

We will ask you to complete a Parent Declaration Form once you have joined us. This declares to the Council how many hours of free funding you are claiming and whether you are claiming it via one or more settings (you may claim via up to 3 settings).

The government  are currently promoting Tax Free Childcare to families and parents, so please could you encourage your parents them to visit the Childcare Choices website to find out if they could get Tax-Free Childcare. It is available to over a million working families, including many who don’t get other types of government support. The website includes a childcare calculator which parents can use to work out how much they could get. As with the 30 hours codes, once a family has applied for Tax Free Childcare, parents must check and reconfirm their details with HMRC every 3 months. Reconfirmation is simple and quick to do. It is parents’ responsibility to reconfirm on time, although they will get a reminder email from the childcare service.

Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions about fees or funding.

Daily Timetable

Morning Session 8.30am – 11.30am
Lunch 11.30am – 12 Noon
Afternoon Session 12 Noon – 3pm

Lunch

Hot dinners are available to children in both Saplings and Seedlings classes at a current cost of £2.75 per day. (This will rise slightly in September 2024) These meals need to be ordered and paid for in advance on our online ParentPay system. Alternatively, children may bring their own packed lunch.

The children will eat their lunches in the Brown Hall situated in the main school building. They mix with their Preschool and FS2 friends and it helps enormously with the transition to FS2.

If your child stays for a whole day and you are on certain benefits, they may be eligible for Free School Meals (Please complete the FSM Application form in your pack and return it to school)

For Preschool enquiries contact: preschool.rws@ebor.academy

Curriculum

At Robert Wilkinson our motto is “Proud to work, learn and grow together” and this starts at the very beginning of your child’s time with us. We view children as strong, competent, capable and powerful with enormous potential for learning. The environment that we provide enables the children to foster and develop these skills. Our curriculum themes set the early foundations for future learning throughout their school journey.
We believe that creativity can be found in any activity and is strongly encouraged. Our staff observe and listen to the children as they play and learn and encourage them to be creative through effective, sensitive questioning and modelling alongside the children. There is a strong focus on communication skills and vocabulary building.

Activities are documented on a whole class and individual basis through photographs and written observations and these are celebrated through each child’s individual Learning Journey via a system called Tapestry. This Learning Journey follows the child through from the beginning of their Preschool time until they leave to move into our Reception classes.

All teaching and learning are underpinned by the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. More information on this can be found on the “Early Years Curriculum” page of our website https://rwprimary.co.uk/early-years-curriculum/

Children have long periods of uninterrupted play in an indoor and outdoor environment that encourages them to be independent yet collaborative, to take risks and develop perseverance and resilience and to learn to problem solve and challenge themselves. We place great emphasis on Outdoor Learning and enjoy using the vast outdoor facilities and environment that our school is fortunate enough to have.

SEEDLINGS CLASS
In our Seedlings Class teaching and learning is mainly child led. This means that staff closely observe how the children are engaged in their chosen activities and come alongside them to then teach them and further their learning “in the moment”. This enables children to learn whilst they are doing what they are particularly interested in and are, therefore, more highly motivated and engaged and more likely to learn.

SAPLINGS CLASS
To build on their early experience in Seedlings and help prepare our children for school, in our Saplings Class some activities are adult initiated and led. These activities tend to be to ensure the teaching of specific skills and an adult can model specific learning strategies to aid learning. There will be some time spent on early phonics and maths development.

Relationships

Reciprocal relationships between adults and children are essential and we respect and value the relationships we have with our children and their parents and carers. We welcome parents and carers sharing with some of our activities such as our regular half termly “Stay and Play” sessions, Christmas activities or Parents Evenings.

We value our relationships with the wider community too, with the rest of the school and with our partnership Nurseries in the village. We also take part in wider whole school events.

Inclusion

We are fully inclusive of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and children who have other additional needs. All staff work alongside these children and their parents, as well as the SEND Team within school to employ various supportive strategies so that the children make progress and enjoy successful outcomes and access the curriculum alongside their peers.Our SEND Lead is Mrs Cummings and we are happy to arrange contact for you with her.

If you have any concerns regarding your child’s learning or development please speak to your child’s teacher in the first instance. The class teacher will be able to discuss your concerns and signpost you to next steps and services if required.

Uniform

Preschool children wear a red sweatshirt to show that we are part of the wider school community and this is required for all children. Some children wear the full school uniform – we are very flexible, but do ask that all children wear a red sweatshirt.

We really value our garden, our outdoor classroom and our Forest School and as such we go outside in all weathers. We believe that there is “never any inappropriate weather, just inappropriate clothing”! We therefore ask that each child has a pair of wellies to keep at Preschool as well as a waterproof suit that is big enough to go over the top of any thicker coat they might also wear. This means that they can wear both to remain warm and waterproof.

Please ensure that all items are named – you can imagine the chaos of trying to find wellies and waterproofs when we have 60 children on roll!

Spare clothes

We suggest that all children bring a backpack to school with them (this can be brought each session they attend or stay on their coat peg) containing some items of spare clothing, including underwear and socks/tights. There may be occasions when children get wet from playing in the water, dirty from playing in the mud kitchen, paint from painting or, sometimes, wet from a toileting accident. We do have some spare clothing items, but our resources are limited. We have also found that most children prefer to have some of their own clothes to change into if they need to. Again, please ensure that all spare clothes are named.

If your child is in nappies or pull ups please include spares and wipes and nappy sacks in their backpack.

If you have any uniform or underwear that your child has grown out of, we are always grateful for contributions to our “Spares” box!

Contact Details 

Telephone communication to Pre-School is via the main school office – please telephone 01904 806414 or you can email direct to preschool.rws@ebor.academy.