Creative Area
Within the Creative Area, children are given the opportunity to explore their creativity through a variety of materials which they can self-select. By providing resources to draw, paint, and mark-make, children can expand upon their imagination, independence, and take ownership of their artwork as they create something special. These types of experiences allow children to explore their emotions and wellbeing through artwork, using real-life pictures and models to discuss thoughts and feelings in a different way.
Home Corner
In our Home Corner, children can begin to explore and role play different scenarios from different parts of their lives. Across the area, there are opportunities for dressing up, hairdressing, tea parties, and sewing. Children are offered experiences to learn new life skills and build upon them during their time here at Dargavel ELCC, supporting them into their next chapter and providing foundations for learning in future.
Block Area
Playing with blocks can boost children’s development by enhancing fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness. In addition to this, children can expand upon their creativity, problem-solving, and early experiences of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This type of play encourages social skills and can provide opportunities for cooperation and teamworking, while supporting development in vocabulary and early level Mathematics.
Social Zone
Our baking area offers children the chance to explore different foods, sourcing ingredients and using techniques to prepare and taste them. Experiences like these allow children to develop skills in baking, cooking, food preparation and hygiene, and teamworking as we navigate our recipes from start to finish. Furthermore, children can embrace different cultures and learn about their food, family, and environments. Using books, internet access, and through conversations with others, children can discuss aspects of their culture and share with their peers.
Sharing this space, the Sewing Area is being created to expand on the life skills developed in the Home Corner. This will allow us to highlight and provide depth for children’s sewing skills, showcasing different textures and techniques for fabrics and materials, and creating pieces that can be used to enhance play such as outfits for story characters.
Imagination Zone
The Imagination Zone provides opportunities for children to use open-ended resources and create their own play through their use of imagination. With resources ranging from dinosaurs to underwater animals, dolls houses to construction, children can express their interests and ideas through use of role play. Within this area, we incorporate safe and supported use of technology through iPads and laptops, using them to expand our learning through searching for information on the Internet, or by utilising educational games and resources on sites such as TopMarks. A selection of our resources have attached QR codes, allowing the children to follow the process of scanning them and finding out more information about their chosen object.
Book Nook
Our Book Nook allows children to embrace a quiet, nurturing space to explore books and literacy with their peers and adults. Children often use this area to read and discuss stories, sharing how the book is important to them and what memories it holds. We expand on this further by introducing techniques for children to create their own stories, following the story from start to finish with the implementation of Talk for Writing.
Within this area, we also have our Promethean board, allowing us to mark-make and visualise our stories on a wider scale. Children can see their stories come to life using technology as they create the characters, events, and how they are resolved. Furthermore, we use Renfrewshire’s supported software Book Creator to support children in developing digital versions of their stories, showing how physical and digital books can work side by side.
Outdoor Area
With our Outdoor Area being so vast, it is split into four smaller sections each with their own distinct focus.
Sand and Water
Children are encouraged to explore and participate in experiences around STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths) within the sand and water area of the garden. Children participate in experiences where they learn about different textures and properties of both sand and water, and can explore different effects that forces or the weather may have on these resources.
Mud Kitchen
Children can explore the mud kitchen in a similar way to the home corner. Using natural materials from around the garden, children can develop their role play and imagination skills within the mud kitchen. The children are provided real life resources such as pans, utensils and appliances to learn why we use them in our everyday lives and learn about the safety around these items.
Studio 18
The studio is a versatile area within the garden where children can access a variety of experiences. Sometimes, musical experiences may be taking place where children are learning and exploring with musical instruments. Other times you may find art taking place where the children can express their thoughts and feeling using natural materials from the garden or wider community.
Allotment
Within the allotment, children learn about how we look after our environment. They explore planting seeds, looking after the produce planted and seeing how it affects the wildlife that we see within our garden area. The children also learn about the important of water and sunlight throughout this process.
