Children usually move into The Village group at around 18 months. By now our children are active, inquisitive and rapidly developing language skills. Therefore this is an engaging room with plenty of exciting activities for the children to discover and explore. The learning opportunities provided daily allow the children to develop across all aspects of the EYFS Curriculum. Activities are generally open ended and explorative in nature which enables the children to take the learning along lines that interest them. Staff carefully observe what the children enjoy doing and build upon this to ensure that the room is always stimulating and reflective of the children’s interests. The rich variety of resources keeps our children busy, engaging in lots of different play all day. As our children turn two, they are gradually ready to participate in some simple, focused activities with staff members. We take this opportunity to introduce early literacy and numeracy skills in a fun and play based way as and when children choose to participate. These focused activities tend to be a huge success with children engaging well in them! There is also a huge focus on developing social skills in this age group. Children gradually become more confident, independent and develop sharing skills and friendly behaviour through careful support and encouragement of the staff. Children also participate in short circle time activities where they share their favourite stories and songs as a group. These are always popular and the children love choosing which story is going to be read with their friends. Typically, this age of children are picking up new vocabulary and linking words together to form short, simple sentences and make verbal requests. We hear the children begin to chatter with each other in play and begin to build friendships. Interactions with children of this age group are always lovely!