At Kymbrook Pre-School we actively promote British Values through the four core values, these being; Democracy, Rule of law, Individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance.

• Democracy

We do this by ensuring all children are given equal opportunities to share their views and opinions, this may be in the form of the resources that are out on offer and, or the next activity that the children would like to do. We also ensure that all children are given the freedom to speak and share their feelings, ideas, and choices throughout the day.

We provide a range of activities to enable children the opportunities to learn about turn-taking, sharing and collaboration working. This is through everyday activities and through games, sustained shared thinking opportunities, cooking activities and our tip-tap-toe box.

• Rule of law

We support children in understanding right from wrong through positive reinforcement and discussions to help children develop their awareness around this.

We have constant and consistent boundaries and expectations for children, which is visible and shared around the room for parents/carers to see also.

We encourage all children to tidy up their toys after they have finished playing with them and develop children’s awareness to respect and care for the resources that we have in the setting.

• Individual liberty

We provide an environment in which children have the opportunity to develop their self-confidence and self-esteem. We ensure that all children have the opportunity to risk take within a safe, secure and enabling environment. We recognise risk taking as an important structure to a child’s short, and long-term development. Therefore, we facilitate ‘Forest School like activities’ in the Village Hall greenery, woodland area across the road from us. We build dens, use tools, use gas fires to make hot chocolate and make objects out of natural resources. All the activities undertaken are risk assessed prior to it commencing, then continuously assessed throughout the activity to ensure that all children are safe, this is done by staff members intervening to eliminate risks, and prevent any risk or hazard from arising or developing.

Health and Safety executive (2012) recognises play as invaluable to children’s well-being and development, and their key message is that ‘’when planning and providing play opportunities, the goal is not to eliminate risk, but to weigh up the risks and benefits. No child will learn about risk if they are wrapped in cotton wool’’ (p.1).

By promoting individual liberty through our ‘Forest School like activities’ we aim to help children build their confidence and their own abilities. We also facilitate and offer other activities such as allowing children to test out their own ideas, mix colours, using the trim trail, ride-ons and much more. When children are taking part in their choice of activity, staff talk to the children about their experience and by doing so also extends children’s current knowledge and understanding to support their learning and development holistically.

• Mutual respect and tolerance

We value everyone, we accept and celebrate all cultural beliefs and we share and respect the views of others.

We take our time to listen and respect each other’s views by having open discussions to explore and reflect upon our experiences, feelings and, or thoughts. We discuss the similarities and differences between ourselves and others and among families, faiths, communities, cultures, and traditions. We do this by celebrating and providing all children with experiences and opportunities to learn and discover about the world around them.

Our British Values Policy can be found here; British values

Some of the exciting things we have been up to that promotes British Values at Kymbrook Pre-School.