Our aim is to provide enchanting and enabling environments for children to learn in their own way. We have five themes of our ethos, which underpin everything that we do with the children at the nursery, and define our nursery design concept and daily operations.
– Active Childhoods
– Creative Minds
– Eating Healthy
– Loving The Planet
– Evolving With Time
Active Childhood
Inspiring young children to lead an active lifestyle starts in their childhood. Most young children are generally very active as they explore the surrounding world, gradually refining motor skills throughout their early development.
During the progression through education a child’s level of active participation in sport or other physical activities significantly decreases. This might be due to more pressure from other areas of academia, lack of facilities to pursue a particular interest or just too much “screen time”. It is important to instill the significance of an active lifestyle in our children as part of their physiological growth, but also as a foundation for general health and well-being in the future.
We absolutely encourage children at our nursery to be highly active. Whether this be moving around in our outdoor play area, exploring The Loxfords grounds for mini beasts or walking to the local park for group activities and outdoor games. Our team are passionate about facilitating a range of activities to accommodate even the wriggliest of children, encouraging the healthy building blocks of an active lifestyle, which may stay with them into adulthood.
Creative Minds
We are passionate about inspiring creativity in learning. With a plethora of activities designed to spark creative minds, our specialist equipment accomodates everything from Music, Dance, Art & Crafts, Drama and more!
Music has an incredible ability to move us, provoking emotions and changing the way we think and feel. It also improves brain functions, closely linked with many areas of a child’s early development. Not only does music enhance a child’s aural abilities and language skills, but research also suggests a strong correlation between active participation in music and general learning ability and academic attainment. Music is a great way to engage children in learning, encouraging creativity and artistic expression, helping them connect with their imagination and channel emotions.
Our specialist knowledge and equipment allows us to offer a range of creative and music based activities for your child. With early introductions to a whole collection of world instruments, singing activities and piano playing; we encourage your child to be confident and self assured, naturally applying creativity across all areas of learning.
To help you continue this learning at home, we’ve also setup a spotify account with playlists of our favourite nursery songs and rhymes! Our selection is a cheery combination of the English classics, as well as nursery songs from other countries, to meld with our language syllabus.
If you want to check out our spotify account, just copy/paste this link into your search bar:
https://open.spotify.com/user/monkeypuzzlehighbury
Participation in music not only enhances a young child’s development, but also ties in with an extensive range of skills and competencies relevant to future academic progress.
Listening:
Listening is the first mode of language that children acquire, it is important for their understanding of the world and ability to communicate effectively with others. The ability for our brain to differentiate tone and pitch in a sound is what makes us able to understand language. Exposure to music from an early age gives the auditory system a head start, allowing speech and language skills to develop much more effectively.
Speech & Language:
The human brain processes music and language in a similar way, both involving auditory processing of individual sounds. It is in understanding variations in pitch and verbal attenuation that we are able to decipher different words, using our memory to identify their meaning. Exploring music also improves phonological and phonemic awareness in speech. Just as music comprises of many different sounding notes, speech is also built up of connected phonemes, which when put together make up the words and sentences of spoken language.
Reading:
Reading skills and verbal memory can be significantly improved through music tuition. It is verbal memory that retains information in your memory allowing comprehension of sentences and text when reading. Learning to play a musical instrument enhances the section of the brain responsible for verbal memory thus increasing reading ability.
Maths:
Learning music notation also requires an understanding of time division and note value, two very important elements to reading and performing music. This level of understanding can be transferred to the application of basic maths.
Concentration:
Music develops concentration skills, encouraging discipline and the ability to maintain attention to a refined task over prolonged periods of time. This is highly important for further development of any skill or task.
Coordination:
Playing music improves hand-eye coordination and dexterity and enhances motor skills. These are all very useful when partaking in physical activities of any kind.
Confidence:
Participation in music and particularly performance can play a significant role in boosting self confidence and social esteem, encouraging imaginative expression of creativity whilst reinforcing the importance of inclusion and cooperation. Children can also build a sense of pride following achievement, gaining enthusiasm for learning.
Relaxation & Patience:
Music can be used to relax the brain. It also teaches the importance of patience and perseverance to a particular task or learning objective, a skill which is increasingly important in later education.
Healthy Eating
We believe it is absolutely essential for the children in our care to develop positive eating habits early on in their lives. Many of a child’s early experiences of food will have a significant impact on their preferences and eating habits later on in adult life, so it is important that we encourage children to be adventurous with their food, and to understand about different foods and their nutritional values. We provide a healthy and balanced diet for the children to ensure they have all the energy to fulfill their learning and thrive in the nursery environment. Our 4 week menu’s celebrate the diversity in our nursery, with dishes from all around the world and flavours, which will expand the children’s palette for great food.
Monkey Puzzle Highbury has a 5* food hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency.
Children’s Cooking Counter
Our Children’s Cooking Counter offers an open plan kitchen facility, where children can observe the nursery chef making all their lovely food. It offers a great learning opportunity for children to learn about different ingredients, food groups and recipes and to work collaboratively with our chef to create some wonderful culinary delights!
Evolving With Time
More and More in the modern world we are innovating the way we live, work and play. The evolution of technology is something which perhaps defines the era in which we live, with the boundaries of possibility constantly challenged by creative minds looking to progress our knowledge and understanding of the world. Technology adds great benefit to many areas of life and education is no exception.
At our nursery we recognise the importance of supporting children’s exploration of technology as a learning tool and as a common aspect of the modern world. We have equipped our nursery with a multitude of technology to support your child’s learning and see it as a massive responsibility to ensure that children are taught from an early age about how to be safe with technology and the internet.
SMART Interactive Whiteboard and Table
Our Pre-School and Toddler groups have access to our interactive Whiteboard, which is an educational tool for the facilitation of media in learning. We have turned the negative stigma of “screen time” into a positive way of engaging children in learning. The Interactive Whiteboard’s touch screen feature allows children to interact with an information rich digital platform, whilst also practicing writing and group cooperation skills.
iPads
In keeping both with Ofsted recommendation and our “green” ethos we use iPad technology to document observations and log books, making the processes involved with excellent childcare as paper free as possible. Not only does this contribute towards caring for the planet, but it also gives our childcare professionals more valuable time to engage with your child instead of being bombarded with paper work. This also presents us with the opportunity to share your child’s successes through email, allowing you to stay up to date with their progress and send us your feedback at your own convenience.
Security
Technology also extends to security. We understand the importance of providing a safe and secure environment for your child at all times. CCTV and video door access control helps us to know who is entering the building to ensure that no unwanted visitors gain access at any time.
Loving The Planet
We have a strong focus on being environmentally friendly, providing your child with a solid understanding of the world, encouraging them to have respect for our planet. The effect of humans on Earth has and will continue to have an unprecedented effect on it’s sustainability and the future of all our lives.
Our nursery is the “greenest” nursery in the country, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. From the greenest energy supply, right through to the wonderful beech wood toys and furniture, designed and crafted since 1920 by a small community in Sussex.
Green Energy
Since it’s restoration and development, this historic and elegant property now boasts an environmental breakthrough, incorporating a unique heating and energy system that reduces harmful emissions to a level hardly seen before. The system is one of the first to be installed in a new development anywhere in London and will provide heat and energy for the nursery, while having a low detrimental impact on the local environment.
This revolutionary method of providing the energy and heat that we need to operate, utilises glycerine waste which is added to standard biofuels, providing our energy needs with very low emissions. It is currently recognised as the greenest fuel solution available. The use of glycerine waste which burns more efficiently and produces less emissions, also limits the reliance on growing bio fuels, freeing up land which can then be used for growing food crops.
http://www.aquafuelresearch.com/glycerine-chp.html
Lighting
Our lighting solution uses a series of sensors, which analyse the amount of natural light in the room and automatically adjust the dimmer switches accordingly. This not only regulates the light in each room but allows for us to save energy during brighter times of the day.
Community Playthings
Our furniture, play-frames and room dividers are sourced from Community Playthings. They are a small community from Sussex who specialise in crafting products and designing room layouts for early years settings. The wood used to make these products is sustainably sourced from beech forests in the Baltic states and all products are designed to allow your child the most stimulating experience. The chairs are made out of one piece of wood for ease of hygiene, the tables feature extendable legs so that we can accommodate any age/size children. And the play frames are interlocking in structure to ensure easy construction but more importantly safety for your child.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/
Planting Seeds for the Future
Inclusive to teaching children about the world around us, we undertake projects on growing plants, fruits and vegetables. This not only helps children to understand the origins of food, to encourage healthy diets; but it also allows them to understand how the living world thrives and conditions required to support natural growth.
