Junipers Pre-school is a Social, Emotional and Mental Health Accredited setting. In March 2023, we were awarded the Sandwell well-being charter mark for promoting the importance of mental health and emotional well-being in our work with children and families.

ORIM Newsletter – ORIM stands for Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction and Model. It is a framework produced by Professor Cathy Nutbrown that highlights four main ways that parents can support and develop their child's learning at home. The idea of the framework is to build parents knowledge and confidence and encourage them to see how everyday tasks and activities can become learning opportunities for their children. It helps parents to notice and see the smaller skills children need to learn and development before they can meet their bigger targets such as reading, writing, and talking. During Lockdown 2020, we provided parents with ideas and activities they could do at home to both entertain their children and to continue supporting their learning whilst in the home environment.

Home Learning Environments for Young Children  We were approached by our local authority to have some of the work we did during Lockdown 2020 published into a book authored by Professor Cathy Nutbrown who has recently had the honour of Dame awarded to her for her contributions to Early Childhood Education.

Extract from the book: We gave parents story time opportunities that they could use to read to their children, beginning with the familiar We're going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen and Oxenbury, 1989)which we knew children enjoyed and would join in with the repetition. We later introduced a story about Coronavirus, which we hoped would alleviate any fears. We gave parents example questions they could ask their child after they had listened to the story, helping them to practice their listening, recall and comprehension skills. One child, who was very shy and quiet when she began Pre-school , sent us a video of her telling us a story using a picture book. This increased confidence helped her when beginning school the following September.