Adel Inspirations- Before and After School Club
At Adel Inspirations we are a Reggio Emilia inspired setting; our rooms are equipped with natural, up-cycled and recycled resources. Children of all ages explore and investigate unusual items, build and construct with sensory materials and use our real size home kitchen area for role play. We have up-cycled cable reels to use with our wooden cars, trains and animals, along with a fully furnish-able small world house and people. We have opportunities for maths and literacy in all areas as well as a loose parts maths area and a cosy quiet book corner. Inspiration’s creative areas have a wide variety of art resources, clay, paints, pastels, scissors, sticking collage materials, loose parts, colouring pencils, felt tips and paper.
Our Breakfast club has a calm relaxed atmosphere with friendly welcoming staff. Your children can play with all our resources, including art and crafts and choose what they would like to eat from a wide range of cereal, porridge, and toast for £6per morning.
After school club at Inspirations is also staffed with friendly, qualified and experienced practitioners, all with up-to-date DBS checks, first-aid and safeguarding training. We offer a light tea consisting of meals such as beans on toast, wraps, sandwiches, soup and bread and salads.
Our children can choose to play outdoors with our sports equipment, including cricket, football, hula hoops, and tennis. They enjoy having access to the outdoor water tap with buckets and paint brushes, the mud kitchen and sand hut, tarpaulin for den building and hammocks, and can also use the school playground and field. Inside, children play with all our resources, including creative materials, every evening. Our Atelierista (art teacher), Julie, now plans and sets up activities daily for our after-school club and stays until 6pm on a Thursday to work with the children on developing creative skills and techniques using a range of materials such as, clay, Papier-mâché, powder paints, models and natural resources. Therefore if your child enjoys expressing their creativity within a tranquil atmosphere, we can offer this for £12 per session to 6pm.
We have availability Monday to Friday to 6pm. Please email
deborah@inspirationsnurseries.co.uk or phone 0113 2612262 to
book or for more information.
The Role of an Atelierista
The Role of an Atelierista
The atelier and atelierista are integral parts of the Reggio Emilia approach. The atelierista, a teacher with a background in the arts, works together with children in the atelier (studio). Together they will often embark on long-term projects and experiment with a variety of creative mediums. The atelier is a learning space and shared environment where children can express themselves through ‘the hundred languages’. This may be through singing, drawing, dancing, clay or natural materials. ‘The hundred languages’ represents the infinite potential where children can express their learnings, feelings and ways in which they comprehend the world.
As an atelierista, I have witnessed how effective the Reggio-inspired approach is in contrast to traditional education. Children have an innate sense of curiosity and awe and when presented with a range of resources and materials, they expand their inquisitive minds. Interestingly, artists are often trying to channel this child-like wonder, exploring with a sense of openness without the restriction of doubts and fears. Therefore, I believe in utilising this inner curiosity and creating a space where life-long learners and artists can emerge.
Rather than conforming to the role of a teacher in a traditional sense, as an atelierista I learn alongside the children whilst encouraging problem solving, expression and communication. Together we are on an exciting adventure and learning process that unfolds before our eyes. In their own time, the children begin to master techniques and familiarise themselves with different mediums. This also provides me the opportunity to understand the different ways children learn, to observe each child as a unique individual.
Observing, listening, documenting and reflecting are essential to the role of an atelierista. Significantly, being alert and aware is crucial to witness the children’s discoveries, to hear meaningful conversations or to ask thought provoking questions. Only after this process can quotes, observations and notes be written. This documentation allows for deep reflection for both the atelierista and the children, in which interests, learning and progress can be shared. For me, it also reveals subtle patterns about the children’s behaviour and can indicate which direction we might take next. Documentation also enables me to truly listen to the voice of the child and respect their learning journey.
During my time as an atelierista, I am constantly surprised and delighted with what children discover. Each day is a new opportunity for exploration and insights, often stepping back and allowing for that magic to happen takes learning to a new level. This process, rather than the final product, is ultimately the most important part of a child’s journey. I think even as adults, we would benefit from engaging in the world with curiosity and to trust the process.
Julie Lai
The Importance of Speech and Communication
The pre-school years are an important stage in a child’s language development. It ensures the foundations are in place for later learning, literacy and forming relationships. At Inspirations nurseries we provide a language rich environment incorporating the Reggio Emilia Approach into our pedagogy. The children’s voice is at the heart of our ethos and is encouraged at every opportunity. Group morning meetings enables children to express their thoughts, ideas and experiences, as well as listening to other’s and asking questions which has a positive impact on confidence and self-esteem.
Communication enables children to build relationships. By interacting and playing
using speech and language, a child develops social skills and friendships that
support their well-being. Free choice play using loose parts, role play resources
and provocations allow children to use their own ideas and creativity whilst
encouraging interaction and communication. Children will play together in a mud
kitchen, using real size pans and bun trays chatting and problem solving to find
the perfect amount and size of stones to make cupcakes, or how much water to
add to the soil to make a delicious mud pie.
Children should be seen and heard
As children learn and use new vocabulary, they gain confidence in speech and
expression supporting development of reading and writing skills. We love books
at Inspirations and our practitioners read fiction and non-fiction books regularly
with children, expanding their vocabulary and knowledge as well as may other
skills. More exposure leads to better spelling, grammar, writing, and oral
communication.
Singing Nursery rhymes with our young children daily helps them to develop an
ear for our language. Both rhyme and rhythm promote children to hear the
sounds and syllables in words, which helps children learn to read. The sooner a
child learns to read, the more opportunities they have to encounter the written
word. Teaching children phonetic sounds is also something we do to support
speech clarity and differentiation as well as reading and writing skills.
Ofsted have re-affirmed the evidence that children with delayed speech and
language are: '...less able to access the curriculum and to articulate their
thoughts and feelings. This can have a negative impact on their personal, social
and emotional development.' Therefore, good speech, language and
communication skills support educational and social achievement for the future of
our children which is why we have such an emphasis in our early years settings.
Children should be seen…and heard.
-Deborah
Pre-School at Adel
Are you longing to peer into the future, catch a glimpse of normality resuming once again? I think we can agree this is going on longer than we initially imagined, but here we are. We are still in this together, and we hope during these times of increased social distancing you can still maintain social connections online, just like those in this news story that brought a smile to our faces. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-55732174
So we start this blog by asking, how are you, and what are you grateful for? We are grateful to have our Inspirations Nurseries families that continue to bring a sense of community.
Last week our blog focused on our Horsforth Pre-School, so this week we hand over to Deborah our manager at Adel to talk about our other Inspirations Nursery only 10 minutes away.
Welcome to Adel
At Adel we take children from the age of three, to starting school. Like Horsforth, we follow the Reggio Emilia Approach, which comprises of loose parts, mirrors and reflection, natural resources and investigation of up-cycled and recycled trinkets and materials.
Our setting is within the grounds of Adel St John the Baptist Primary School which is surrounded by beautiful woods and trees. There’s a well-equipped natural garden with a climbing wall, workbench, piano, mud kitchen and bikes. We have the use of the super large playing field and the conservation area which we use twice weekly for Forest School.
Our planning involves the outdoors as much as indoors and the children can choose where they would like to play.
Inside we have a very spacious room with areas to promote learning wherever the children choose to be.
Set Out to Inspire
The aim of our pre-school environments is to inspire the children to want to explore and learn. We have a maths, literacy, construction, small world, home and creative area of which all have natural resources for the children to explore and a wide range of loose parts to promote maths, communication, imagination and problem solving.
After observing the children’s common interests, we plan as a team to add resources and challenges to the areas and talk to the children about what they know and what they want to know, and how they would like to learn.
The children’s key worker also plans for their key children’s individual interests to support and provide opportunities to progress in all areas of development. As we are a pre-school we encourage independence and all skills necessary for school readiness, such as being able to express their own needs, listen to others and stories, separate from their carer, independent self-care, and understanding of British Values which encourages respect for ourselves and others.
Phonic, Spanish and Creativity
We teach phonics which is differentiated to meet and challenge each child’s individual ability. At Adel we also introduce Spanish to the children; an introduction to languages through songs, games and activities promoting enthusiasm with learning languages later in school. We also have our own Atelierista who comes in 3 times a week to deepen creative projects in smaller groups.
Throughout both our Pre-School settings we support your children in becoming strong independent learners, enabling them to think critically and outside the box. Their use of imagination and their understanding of the world, alongside their ability to problem solve, will stand them out from the crowd and give them a head start in life.
If you love our nursery as much as we do, have any questions or are interested in joining us check out more on the website here-http://simonr30.sg-host.com/our-settings/adel/ or contact- deborah@inspirationsnurseries.co.uk