Little Oaks Nursery School

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🦊 I always aim to set out a little morning challenge, whether it be skills based, imaginary play or a tricky toy to master.

It’s available the whole morning to come back to - to explore it in their own way, to observe with curiosity or to try it in unconventional ways.

There is no right or wrong here only space for curiosity and playfulness!

🍁 I love this simple, inexpensive and quick set up. Lots of textures, and huge amounts of hand eye coordination, fine motor skills and brain work!

🌿 My best part was actually the team work, encouragement and learning from each other! I love seeing them busy at play!

Little Oaks Nursery School updated their information in their About section.

Little Oaks Nursery School updated their information in their About section.

🍂 “Children are naturally creative. It's our job to give them the freedom, materials, and space to let their creativity blossom to its full potential.” 🍂

🍁 Hip Hop Hooray from my little Easter bunnies 🐰 x

🍂 Term 2 here we come!

🍃 We’re here to play, create, explore, be brave & adventurous, make lifelong little buddies, and to be fearless, free and endlessly curious.

🌿 Term 2 is going to be an adventure, and we’re ready for every moment!

🌿 That’s a wrap on the first term of Little Oaks Nursery School!

🦊 We’ve ended the term with our feet covered in nature, hands full of our play and our hearts filled with beautiful memories!

🍂 We’re excited for term 2 and the next chapter of our play adventure.

🌼 Spaces are very limited for term 2 - book your school visit soon!

🍂 We love process art!

🍄 The freedom to explore, express and create is encouraged through an open-ended invitation to create your own little masterpieces with the tools on hand and the inspiration around you.
☘️ There is no right or wrong, no specifications or rules. It’s your art - you create what you see, feel, understand, imagine or envision.
🌿 And it’s all beautiful because it’s unique!
🌼 Creative time is such an amazing emotional outlet, a regulating activity, sensory input opportunity and a spark for creativity, imaginary thinking and fun - the three things we love most!
🌸 I always encourage the exploration of colour, space, using tools in new ways, freedom of their expression and confidence in their abilities.
🦔 This really is a play adventure and I do everything I can to ensure it is an adventure of a lifetime, creating core memories and experiences. Ensuring they leave confident, empowered, independent, creative, kind and brave little people!

🌿 The only way to do a Thursday - covered in slime!

🦔 Your play adventure awaits!

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit. Spaces are limited.

🦊 We LOVE sensory play!

🍁 There is tons of research elaborating on the benefits but my favourite being - learning through exploring & curiosity, problem solving in action, creative and out of the box thinking, confidence in their own abilities, imaginary play and open-ended play.

🍂 I love setting up sensory play using natural bases, different textures, colours, elements, smells, tools and materials. But what sensory play looks like to me is less important than what it could mean for my tiny tots.

🍃 Keeping it open-ended is so vital to allow them to take the lead of their own play, using the elements you provided to follow their imaginations, wherever they may go! This means what you want might not match what their outcomes are, there are no rules in this play, no right way or fixed outcome the play leads too.
I always try to avoid prompting them to coax them to my end goal, it’s so important to engage but don’t interrupt their play!

🍄 Let them be little. Let them be messy, wild and free. Sometimes sensory play isn’t perfect - it might be nature soup, planting vegetables, or exploring farm textures!

🌼 Natural, beautiful, magical, free and child-led play is what it’s all about at Little Oaks!

🐿 Join us for a play adventure of a lifetime. This is the best year of play and I love being a part of it 🤍

🐾 DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit. Spaces are limited.

🌸 Singing nursery rhymes with my tiny tots is a must!

🌸 These simple songs help develop an ear for language.

🌸 Through rhymes they can hear the sounds of the words which is the basis for reading, they learn new vocabulary & rhythm, as well as memory, concentration and recall.

🌸 These songs are often sequential in events, or incorporate counting, this helps to understand sequence, storylines & an understanding of numeracy.

🍂 I love to incorporate singing with an activity of our theme - that way they can play, sing, learn and experiment all at the same time! If they’re hard at play, I play it in the background or sing quietly along whilst they’re concentrating on their play outcomes.

🍃 Featured here: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!

🦔 Your play adventure awaits!

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet Teacher Amy - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit. Spaces are limited.

🦊 Hot summer days are for summer play!

🌼 Exploring the colour yellow for our summery sunny sensory play led to lots and lots of posting.

🍂 Posting is all about placing an object inside of a container and is great for size and quantity exploration, dexterity & hand-eye coordination.

🍃As we are all about naturally extending play and following the little ones interest, observing and adding to the environment, as we assess play - I added more containers and different sized tools to allow for further exploration and to extend the interest in posting, this led to even more discoveries through play!

🐿 Your play adventure awaits!

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet Teacher Amy - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit. Spaces are limited.

🦊 Little Oaks Nursery School is located on the premises of the Christ Church in Constantia, Cape Town (opposite Constantia Village shopping centre).

🦌 Although located on the grounds of the Church, Little Oaks has no religious orientation and is open to toddlers from the age of 18 months, up until the age of 3 years old.

🦨 The school operates in a separate and private space as an allocated classroom and play area for the children, offering a spacious and bright play environment.

🦝 This opens onto a dedicated, well maintained and fenced play area – that offers beautiful lawns under the trees where the children are free to run, climb, clamber and play together.

🐿 We have ample parking and accessibility for drop-off and collection is safe and stress-free.

🐾 This environment is ideal for a nursery school, with its heart set in nature – the setting is magical, tranquil, welcoming, warm and playful, allowing the children to be free to play their little hearts out together underneath the oak trees.

🦔 Your play adventure awaits!

🍁 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet Teacher Amy - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit.

🦊 Love our .for.kids_ sandpit!

🦌 Sand play has so many wonderful benefits:
🌼 Hand-eye coordination
🌼 Motor skills
🌼 Heavy lifting strengthening
🌼 Small finger work
🌼 Creativity & imaginative play
🌼 It’s inclusive & encourages teamwork and sharing of resources
🌼 Sensory development
🌼 Numerical concepts explored through weight and size
🌼 It’s easily malleable receiving confidence and feeling in control of the medium

🍁 Our sandpit is always filled with dump trucks and all the fun tools needed to dig, dump and explore!

🐾 Your play adventure awaits! Book your school visit today 🦔

⭐️ COMPETITION TIME ⭐️

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🦊 At Little Oaks Nursery School we are all about learning, having fun and creating memories. To promote what we do, we have teamed up with Freedom Adventure Park Cape Town to give away an amazing adventure!

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🍂 What's Up for Grabs?

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5 x 1 hr. Freedom Golden Passes, that’s 5 x 1 hour passes for your family to enjoy, or you can take your little one and 4 of their friends (once-off) for the absolute best play date!

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🍂 How To Enter:

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⭐️ Follow / like our social media pages
⭐️ Tag your friends in the comments section

✨ You can enter as many times as you like.
✨ Competition is hosted on Instagram and Facebook.
✨ Competition closes on the 28th February 2022.
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Terms and Conditions apply

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💥 What is Freedom?

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Freedom is an indoor adventure park that is customised for little ones from the ages of 2 to 12 years old. Freedom offers glow in the dark events, hosts a foam pit, leap of faith, trampolines, climbing walls, 50m long hi-line ropes course, dodgeball, and contemporary climbing structures. Freedom also offers a fully equipped wood burning pizzeria in-house.

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🦊 Hello to all my lovely followers - I’m Amy, but all my tiny tots call me Teacher Amy!

🍂 was my first adventure and now is my second!

🌿 I am a qualified foundation phase and early childhood development teacher - I feel so incredibly lucky to do what I love every single day.

🍂 The little ones that I teach continuously motivate me to up-skill myself, working to better understand their unique approach to life and how to help them navigate this massive growth process. Being a teacher is all I have ever wanted to be and I hope that this shows in all that I do for the children around me – loving them endlessly, filling them with self-pride, confidence and kindness – having fun and making new milestones and memories together.

🍁 I believe without a doubt that the foundation phase is the most important developmental time in a child’s life and that the foundations we lay today will set the tone for who they will become and what they will achieve. Every interaction with them is a chance for them to learn and for me to pass on a skill which will empower them and ensure that they are developing into who they can be, filled with potential, kindness, creativity and confidence.

🍄 I am inspired every day by the children around me, at their wonder of the world, their incredible imaginations, their resilience, their fearlessness, and endless energy for play.

🐾 Come and see our play space, and hear more about the Little Oaks experience - book your school visit: DM / WhatsApp me on 076 728 2872

🍁 School Layout Part 6 - Toys Galore! 🍁

🪴 The use of toys in a nursery school are of course to play and have fun but are also meant to be used as a means to facilitate developmentally appropriate skills:
🐿 Socialising & turn taking
🐿 Encouraging the collaborative play stage
🐿 Problem solving & persistence
🐿 Confidence & curiosity
🐿 Independence & ingenuity
🐿 Imaginative play & creative thinking

🌿 Toy rotation and the concept of “less is more” is really important to not overwhelm them with chaos, colour and too many options and allow them to focus and master a few things at a time. Through rotating toys they are also given the opportunity to continually solve, conquer and understand the toy in different ways.

🍄 Toys should aid and elevate the play but not dictate it. They should encourage free exploration, unstructured free play & child-led play!

🌼 Although I love the Montessori idea of beautiful wooden open-ended toys and have definitely brought that through in my toy selection, I do believe their is a healthy balance between the two worlds. At the end of the day who doesn’t love a multicoloured dump truck?!

🦨 Mirror play is also so important for the development of their sense of self and awareness of being - they love pulling funny faces, and seeing themselves and their friends as a reflection. They begin to recognise who they are from what they see and understand they are looking at their own body and self. It’s also so great to practice and recognise emotions based on facial expressions - all encouraging empathy and kindness.

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit and start your play adventure!

🍃 Structure and routine are very important for the little ones at this age, providing security and boundaries for their day. But that needs to accommodate their freedom to play, ample opportunity for social engagement and the holistic development of their being through choice, independence and recognising all parts of their unique and creative selves.

🍄 Although we might have a full day planned, we follow the lead of the little ones – where their interests lie and how they are responding to the day, flexibility is key to a happy play adventure!

🍁 No activity is mandatory - although we encourage and always leave a space for them to join if they so desire, we will never force them to participate or distress them for choosing not to.

🪵 At this critical age - playing, making memories with their friends, having fun and outdoor physical development is equally as important. Creativity is also expressed through our singing and music time, dancing, open-ended play and discovery, movement and expression, story time and the use of our imagination.

🦊 However they are responding to the day - they have expressed themselves in their own way, learnt through play and had a magical day with their friends, and that’s all that matters. At the end of the day, this is their adventure and we’re so lucky to be a part of it!

🍁 School Layout Part 5 - Our School Library 🍁

🌱 Story time is the centre point of our day together, it’s how we connect first thing in the morning and how we unwind at the end of a busy day.

🌿 I’ve spent years building up my library - being mildly obsessed with books myself, I’m always excited to add a new book to my collection! My most special childhood memories are reading books with my mom when I was very small, I loved commenting on the pictures, getting to turn the pages, and re-hearing my favourite words again and again. This special bonding time I cherished and I hope to impart a similar love of literature to my tiny tots as my mamma did for me 🤍

🍄 Books are the starting point to developing those imaginary worlds, to understanding humour, working through big emotions or changes, developing auditory discrimination skills, word usage and count and the beginnings of rhyming and pronounciations. Story sequencing and retelling through images is the foundation for reading skills and literacy.

🍂 I love watching them choose which books they want me to read, how they all laugh at the same funny word again and again, how they sit and read to themselves quietly or pretend to be me reading to their friend! Books are such a beautiful invitation to imagine and it’s these moments in the day that I cherish!

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit and start your play adventure!

🍁 School Layout Part 4 - Our Sensorial Discovery Area 🍁

🦊 Disciplines such as the Montessori and Reggio Emilia inspired approaches talk about the environment being the third teacher. I love this idea, and aim to bring this concept through in all that I do. Notions such as “following the child”, “open ended play”, “child-led play” or the “curiosity approach” speak to this notion that we as teachers can prepare an environment based on their interests and curiosity or the skills we are focusing on, we can lay out open-ended resources and tools to support their curiosity, and through our observation adjust the environment to match their interests, skills they show they want to practice or the phase of play they are displaying. The environment around them is flexible and dynamic, hence the third teacher!

🦨 This area speaks to all of the above, and is structured to receive sensorial input from their little bare feet right up their little brains at work, and most importantly to just play!

🐿 A changing discovery table allowing for natural explorations, mathematical notions to be explored, skills enhanced and curiosity uncovered - by laying out different items, theme based elements, sensory tools or more complex toys, they are able to return whenever they like, as many times as they like - to try new ways to understand it or to master it in their own ways.

🦔 The learning environment is aimed at their independence, and supporting them on their way to becoming kind, brave, well-regulated, strong, thoughtful, curious, independent and creative kids!

🐾 Come and explore our play space, find out more about the Little Oaks experience and meet - DM or WhatsApp 076 728 2872 to book your school visit.