About Us

The Pre-School can be found in Wendens Ambo Village Hall, a rural location close to the church and village playground (“The Wick”) and a short walk from Audley End railway station.

Wendens Ambo Village Hall has a small garden which is surrounded by a fence and a gate that is padlocked during sessions. The children can enjoy supervised play outside, using a selection of outside toys, a sandpit, a climbing cube/slide.

Regardless of the weather, the outside is used as an extension to the classroom, therefore children should be suitably dressed. We request that parents apply sun cream before leaving home and children have sun hats available. Likewise, in the autumn and winter, ‘named’ Wellingtons and suitable coats should be brought to school. We are proud of our nature garden which is an extension of the Pre-School day. We believe all children thrive in the outside enviroment so we offer many opportunities for the children to explore in the world around them.

As a small village Pre-School, we aim to be fully involved in and contribute to the life and well-being of the local community. They also decorate the church window for Easter, Harvest and Christmas.

We hope this website will help you to understand the aims and general operation of our Pre-School setting, although we realise that no website can fully take the place of an informal visit to watch us in full swing. You are more than welcome to arrange to visit us during any of our sessions.

We are open from 9am – 1pm every day and on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays until 3.00pm.

We’re normally closed during the Essex school holidays, although this may vary occasionally.

We aim to remain a small and friendly group providing opportunities for up to a maximum of 22 children per session aged between 2 and 5 years in caring, stimulating and happy environment.

The Pre-School currently has a generous staff ratio of:

1:4 for under 3s

1:8 for over 3s

We also offer lunch-time sessions following each morning group where your child can bring a pre-packed lunch box. This session concludes at 1.00 pm. Lunch is compulsory on a Thursday session.

Wendens Ambo Pre-School is registered as a Pre-School under the 1989 Children’s Act with Essex County Council Services Department and as such is inspected annually. We are also members of the Pre-School Learning Alliance and have adopted their constitution. Our policies are available on our website under About Us. Hard copies are also held at Pre-School.

At Wendens Ambo Pre-School we work in partnership with parents to help children learn and develop through play. Our staff exercise their imagination, training and expertise in organising the day-to-day activities of the children, reporting to the elected committee of parents, which is responsible for the general administration of the Pre-School.  The elected Committee, who are voted in by the parents at the AGM, are the trustees of the setting and are responsible for the management of the Early Years Setting and all associated liabilities.

The Pre-School depends on the goodwill of parents, their involvement, support and commitment.

Our Ethos

We ensure that every child is at the centre of our Pre-school and everything we do, while valuing them as individuals.

We strive to develop children’s independence, self-confidence, and self-esteem to ensure they grow into confident learners to develop friendships and independently make choices, while expanding on their own interests in the world around them.

We offer a wide range of activities both children led, and adult led encouraging concentration and listening skills through storytelling, music, and movement. Learning through happy, exciting, and playful discovery, they can do this both indoors and outdoors, with free-flow access to the garden. These different environments allow the children to explore and make sense of the world around them.

Our Pre-School has been running for over 30 years. We have decades of experienced staff in both schools and early years; they use their knowledge to help all children grow and challenge themselves. We are highly trained dedicated early years professionals. In addition to their professional qualifications and experience our staff have a wide variety of additional skills, so we are all sympathetic to the unique joys and challenges that you encounter with your own children.

We use the sustained shared thinking approach when playing with your child, supporting them to engage in activities and conversations with adults and their peers. Children learn about the world through verbal interactions. Enabling them to build on their existing skill set and improve their critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and confidence which a useful foundation block for future learning. Interactions help maintain a child’s attention and interest by actively engaging them in conversation so that they can extend their thinking about different topics. This helps them to consider ideas independently and how to solve problems on their own.

We have recently added a new nature garden to our learning environment.

This is a safe space for the children to learn outside, it is essential that young children get frequent and regular opportunities to explore and learn in the outdoor environment. The early years foundation stage (EYFS) Curriculum puts strong emphasis on the importance and value of daily outdoor experiences for children’s learning and development.

Learning outside supports the development of healthy and active lifestyles by offering children opportunity for freedom and movement, promoting a sense of wellbeing. It gives the children contact with the natural world and offers them experiences that are unique to outdoors, such as direct contact with the weather and seasons. Playing and learning also supports children’s problem-solving skills and nurtures their creativity, as well as proving rich opportunities for their developing imagination, inventiveness, and resourcefulness. It gives children a place to explore, experiment, discover, be active and healthy and develop their physical capabilities. Young children learn through their sensory and physical experiences which support brain development, and they learn best when they have the opportunity to play safely and freely, we guidance from skilled practitioners while they learn to assess risk and develop the skills to manage new situations.

We have excellent links with our local primary schools and work closely with them in the summer term each year to support a smooth transition to the next stage of each child’s learning.

Introduction to eyLog

eyLog – Early Years Log – is the most comprehensive tablet PC and web-based solution for nurseries and childcare providers to transform the process of recording observations, assessing a child’s progress and planning activities for the child.

eyLog significantly reduces the time spent on capturing/maintaining observations and managing the learning journey of a child manually; enabling practitioners to focus more on providing the best early years education to children – an ultimate aim of both nurseries and parents.

Benefits for Your Child and the Nursery

eyLog enables you to understand your child’s development on a more regular and real-time basis. Nurseries can share a child’s learning journey with you, increasing your involvement in the activities at the nursery. You receive a unique login on the system and are notified automatically by e-mail as soon as a new observation is published to your child’s learning journey or when any reports are shared with you by the nursery.

eyLog helps move away from the restrictions of a paper based learning journey by incorporating rich media (photos, videos and audios!). It helps you as a parent to have an immersive experience of what the child is doing in the nursery and the context in which your child is engaging in various activities, encouraging their overall growth and development.

eyLog makes it possible for you to contribute observations from home too! Be it something your child does for the first time or during a holiday/vacation, making the learning journey even more comprehensive and enabling ‘parents as partners in learning and development’ of a child in their early years.

The child’s online learning journey can be obtained on request from the nursery in the same rich HTML format on a DVD/USB or as a printed book for you to keep as a lifelong memory when the child moves on to another nursery or school.

Security in eyLog

Security is of key concern in a nursery environment and eyLog takes its security measures very seriously.  eyLog offers fully locked-down secure tablet devices to ensure they are not misused in any manner – Facebook, e-mails, etc., are all disabled on these specially configured high-security tablets. Each user has a separate user-ID and password and using a role-based access mechanism, a user is permitted to see only the information that is relevant for them.

Every parent has there own login details

https://parentportal.eylog.co.uk/parentportal