The Tin hut was established over 60 years ago and was originally our only site until we acquired our Woolley Road site.

​

The Tin Hut is a great place for your young ones to begin their Pre-School journey, as it is homely and the qualified and caring staff offer a nurturing environment where children can begin to make relationships with other children with a wide variety of activities and resources for children to develop new skills and knowledge.

 The Tin Hut is open 5 mornings a week from 9am - 12pm.

We accept children from 2 years, our sessions are £18 each or £6 per hour to top up hours.  We also accept 2 year funding for working families.

​From September 2025 we will be accepting children from 18months old, (up to 3 per session).  We will accept funded places as well as paid sessions.  Fees will be £21 per 3 hour session or £7 per hour to top up hours.

We have three regular staff who work each day with the Children, They are Cassie, who is the leader at the Tin Hut and we have Jess and Lisa, both of whom had their own children at Matlock Pre-school previously.

The team at the Tin Hut will work closely with parents/carers to offer a tailored settling in process to help your children settle into Pre-School happily.

If you would like to book a visit before you decide to put your child's name down for a space please contact us on  07368855743 or 07792353802

Our Curriculum and Pedagogical approach!

Matlock Pre-School - Tin Hut (18 months – 36 Months)

Our curriculum

A curriculum is designed to demonstrate what skills, knowledge and understanding we want children to gain in the time they are with us.  It is based on the statutory early years foundation stage (EYFS), which gives us a framework that we can build on, through the 7 areas of learning.

We have created our curriculum with our whole staff team, designing it to meet the individual needs of children who attend our setting, and ensuring that all areas of learning are included.  It has the intention to help our children learn, develop, thrive and give them the knowledge and skills they need to be ready for the next stage of their learning.

Play - Able to choose resources to play with alongside peers

Community -Feel safe and confident to separate from parents/carers

Independence - Feel confident in letting familiar adults know they need help

Express - Gain a wider range of words and phrases to express their needs

Curiosity - Have explored numbers through play and words and rhymes through stories and singing

Explore - Explored the world around us through new experiences and creative opportunities

Our Pedagogy

(The approach we use to implement our curriculum)

At Matlock Pre-school, we teach children through play.

Recent guidance recognises that children learn best when they’re leading the way in their own learning.  Enabling children to follow their own line of enquiry or individual interest is the basis of a child-centred play pedagogy.  Learning through play is active, meaningful, motivating and joyful.  When play is facilitated by skilled practitioners, the curriculum is brought to life and rewarding and transformative learning experiences are the result.  Young children make sense of the world through play.  Play is how children learn to build connections with others and with nature.  They learn to communicate, think critically, problem-solve, negotiate, collaborate, advocate and resolve conflict.

Our aim is to provide a vast range of opportunities for children to explore, investigate and discover, using a variety of toys, resources, equipment and activities.

We offer a mixture of child led, guided play and adult led activities.   

We ensure that adults are available to children to support their learning and development through planning next steps for individual and groups of children, planning the environment, routines and resources, based on children’s interests and next steps. 

We aim to provide high staff to child ratios to ensure children get to learn in a caring and nurturing environment, where careful interactions support children’s mental and physical health as well as extend their knowledge and skills.

At the Tin Hut our routine consists of play either inside or outside, with some routine activities such as snack time, and story/singing time.

Continuous Provision, Resources and Activities on offer include:

Small world play, block play (large and small construction), quiet and cosy areas for reading stories, books, role play (home corner), open ended resources for role play, malleable and messy play opportunities, mark making equipment and materials, musical instruments and toys that encourage cause and effect, opportunities for climbing through, under and over, outdoor opportunities for riding trikes, scooters and wheeled toys, and a wonderful garden with trees, plants, and flowers to explore the outside world.  We also try to go out and about in the community to local parks, nature walks.

How we will teach our curriculum

Play

• We will provide an organised environment with space and materials and resources for children to access.

• We will give children time and space to engage in play.

• We will create supportive environments, with a wide range of resources to allow for structured and imaginative play.

• We will follow children’s interests to engage them in play and offer open ended play opportunities.

• We will create invitations to play to spark children’s interest to explore and investigate.

• We will ensure adults are available to role model play, getting down to the children’s level, whilst balancing adult involvement with independent exploration to build confidence, creativity, problem solving, co-ordination and social skills.

Community

• We will provide tailored settling in sessions for individual children.

• We ask parents/carers to complete an all about me, so we are informed about children’s interest, needs and current skills and get to know each child.

• Each child will have a key person who is responsive to children’s needs, provides consistent care and promotes secure attachments.

• We will build relationships with parents/carers to create parent partnership, to help children feel safe with us.

• We will ensure staff to child ratios are high so that staff are available to support children with transitions.

• We will support children to manage their feelings when separating from their parent/carers encouraging special comfort toys/objects, providing consistent, predictable routines with some flexibility.

• We will invite parents/carers in for stay and play sessions throughout the year to create parent partnership.

Independence

• We will role model the language children need to ask for help.

• We will acknowledge when children are frustrated, or if we see they need help and support them with the language they need to ask for help, and to name their feelings.

• We will support children to become independent with self-care needs using backwards chaining.

• We will work with parents collaboratively when children are learning new skills such as toileting, hand washing, dressing etc

• We will praise children for having a go and encourage perseverance

Express

• We will talk with children during play and role model language, naming objects and talking about what we and they are doing.

• We will talk to children, listening carefully to what they are saying, role modelling back to them what they have said and extending their vocabulary as they play.

• We will introduce new words through activities, stories, songs and play.

• We will share a wide variety of books and stories with children.

• We will sing songs and action rhymes with children throughout the sessions.

Curiosity

• We will provide a language rich environment with labels, displays and pictures with words and numbers to create interest in numbers and letters/words talking about what they represent to the children when pointing them out.

• We will ensure a wide variety of books are available in all areas of the setting.

• We will provide cosy areas inside and outside, where children can share books with responsive adults.

• We will read stories to children one to one and in small groups.

• We will provide a book share library for children to take books home to share with family members.

• We will talk about the shape, size and position of objects, provide activities where children can explore size, shape such as stacking cups, shape sorters.

• We will sing counting rhymes with children daily.

• We will use counting in routine activities and play to promote interest in counting and numbers.

Explore

• We will provide a wide range of open-ended play materials; messy and malleable play activities based around themes of play to allow exploration of different media and textures every day using their senses.

• We will provide a wide range of creative media and materials for children to access and explore, including resources of different colours, patterns, tones and textures.

• We will set out a variety of adult guided craft/creative activities to interest children in creative activities.

• We will spend time outside every day and talk to children about the things they see, feel, smell and hear, e.g. let them experience different weathers, seasonal experiences.

• We will go on walks and visits around our community.

​