There are opportunities to learn everywhere for Nursery and Pre-Prep pupils ? especially outside, explains Moyna Edmondson, Senior Early Years at Marlborough House School, Kent
Einstein once said that “play is the highest form of research”, and that couldn?t be more true in the case of nursery schools. Learning to play is a skill that calls on all aspects of a child?s physical, social and emotional energy ? in short, it?s an exhausting business! 
Learning opportunities are everywhere, but the trick is to empower children to discover these opportunities for themselves. By encouraging them to listen, question and investigate for themselves, learning and play inevitably start to work alongside each other.
A “good day at the office” for Marlborough House School near Cranbrook, Kent, begins with a basic activity plan, which offers each child tailored learning opportunities. No two days are ever the same, and rarely end in a way we could predict! We know, for example, that Archie will quickly settle into his routine if his toy cars are parked neatly in the Nursery garage on arrival, but ten minutes later he might be focussed on something completely different. Taking learning outside
The painting of autumn leaves collected in Forest School recently inspired the Nursery children to see how they might be used to camouflage some toy dinosaurs, who had found themselves lost amongst the diggers and heavy goods vehicles in the sandpit. This soon morphed into a ...