What We Offer
We offer a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities at The Little Lighthouse Nursery.
Extra-curricular activities are aimed at developing non-cognitive skills, such as teamwork, resilience and confidence along with improved aspirations, behaviour and educational engagement. Extra-curricular provision can also be used to help build a sense of community and promote outcomes within communities.
You can read more about “Extracurricular activities to develop life skills” here.
Every child at The Little Lighthouse Nursery has the opportunity to participate in music and sport lessons, community service and other educational trips and visits. We engage with local organisations, members of the local community, parents and other professionals and specialists within our network to support our extra-curricular programme.
Please continue reading below to find out more about the types of activities we do. Please visit our food page to find out about the food preparation and cooking activities the children participate in.
Music
We are a Music Mark School and are subscribed to the Octave Music Programme which is an ideal introduction to music-making and understanding music that develops a variety of transferable skills. It introduces pupils to singing, creative music, movement and making music on the violin. It is delivered through child-centred, fun lessons.
Each child has access to their own violin, has weekly lessons and has the opportunity to perfume and the end of term performance. If you would like to read more about these sessions, please click the link below.
In addition to their music lessons with Octave, the children have access to a range of percussion instruments and will also have regular informal music sessions at throughout the week to have the opportunity to develop their skills.
Sport
The children at the Little Lighthouse Nursery have fortnightly football lessons with Freddie from LA Ballers, who successfully co-built one of the number one ‘soccer’ programmes in Los Angeles – GB Soccer School. The LA Ballers programme is designed to give all young players a positive and motivational football experience through a carefully designed curriculum of football based activities and games. LA Ballers aims to develop all of the necessary skills that children need to play football as well as social skills such as sharing, taking turns and teamwork. You can find more information about the company here: https://laballers.co.uk/about/.
In addition to this, the children have an opportunity to access the beautiful outdoor area daily and are able to use a range of equipment designed to develop their gross motor skills.
Engaging With The Community
We strongly believe in engaging with and supporting the local community and the children at The Little Lighthouse Nursery have the opportunity to do this on a regular basis.
Egg Buying
The children take it in turns to buy eggs from a lady in the local area who has hens. This increases their understanding of where food comes from and how to exchange money for goods.
Food Bank Donations
We are now working in partnership with Godmanchester Food Bank to provide donated food goods to the local community. We welcome food donations from parents and carers and the nursery children will take it in turns to drop off food goods fortnightly to the local Beacon Centre. More information on the types of goods you can donate can be found here.
Community Service
We will also be doing fortnightly visits to Ferrars Hall Care Home, as we feel this is an amazing opportunity for the children to meet and chat with the older members of our community and participate in crafts and cooking activities with them.
Trips & Outings
The children regularly go out for trips in the local area besides when they are engaging with the local community.
We visit our local allotments where the children can have a hands on experience of planting, growing and sustaining crops.
We visit places of interest within the area, such as the local farm, RAF Alconbury and the Weald.
Educational Visits
Organisations in the Local Community
We regularly invite organisations to come to The Little Lighthouse Nursery to talk to the children about their role within society which ties in with the Understanding of the World part of the curriculum. We have had visits from Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue, Cambridgeshire Police and The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust. The children enjoy learning about the various roles, dressing up as emergency service workers and exploring the vehicles. We also have a visit from the Cambridgeshire Library Bus once a month, where the children get to listen to stories and borrow/exchange books to read at home or at the nursery.
Professionals & Experts in their Field
We also engage with parents and others within the local area and beyond to visit the nursery and talk about their professions, skills and/or do activities with the children. This can be anything from making Chinese dumplings with them for Chinese New Year, to participating in drama workshops.
Other
Hatching Eggs/Life Cycles
One of our much loved extra-curricular activities involved hatching duck eggs (and a surprise chicken egg!) at the nursery. The children very much enjoyed observing the eggs throughout the incubation period, watching a couple of them hatch into a chick and duckling and spending time playing with and caring for the birds over a few weeks before they went back to the farm. The children also enjoy raising caterpillars and watching them turn into butterflies that they can interact with. Activities such as this develop their understanding of life cycles as well as food provenance.
Nature
We get the children involved in caring for edible plants in the Nursery’s private garden, as a way of fostering responsibility. We also have a compost bin in our outdoor area where children learn about composting.
The Little Lighthouse Nursery 