Scallywags Nursery Chelmsford

settling in

At Scallywags we understand that starting nursery, moving from one room to another, changing settings or starting school is an exciting time for children, but can also be a challenging and anxious time for both children and their parent/carers. We are committed to putting the needs of the child first whilst working with each other, parents/carers and other professionals to make transitions as smooth as possible for all concerned.

We realise having your child start nursery can be an anxious and scary time so we aim to make the settling in process the most relaxed and smooth transition as possible.

We recommend doing as many “settling sessions” with your child before the child’s start date. A few sessions could be a “stay and play” session where you would stay in the room with you child, get to know the room routine and the members of staff.

This is also a good time to get to know your child’s key person and go over any specific needs of your child, basic home routines, sleep time, feed time, like/dislikes etc.

After a couple of these sessions we would recommend you leave the child in the room and pop out, so we are allowing your child to grow confident and form a bond with their key person and other carers within the room.

School Transitions

The move from nursery/pre-school to primary school is a massive step for both the children and their parent/carers.

On finding out from parents which school their child will be attending, either the pre-school room leader or individual key practitioners will contact the schools to arrange a meeting. This would involve the child’s new teacher coming into the setting and meeting the children in their nursery environment and getting to know them.

We also include the discussion of moving to primary school within our daily circle time and get the children involved in a variety of school related activities.

Each child’s key practitioner will also complete a detailed transition form including all the areas in which the child has met and completed each area of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and ensure this form along with an up to date progress report of the child is sent off to the reception teacher.