What about my child?
Play is one of the most important factors in the early years, encouraging children to be creative and extend their ideas, understanding, and language. Through play, children are able to explore and experiment with what they know, what they can do, and start to begin to understand the world around them.
However, when you have a child with Special Education Needs (SEN) who may struggle with communication and interaction, ‘play’ can be far from a natural process.
So, what do we do here at The Learning Tree about supporting children who may struggle with ‘Play’? Firstly, there is no one simple way to support all the children, all children are beautifully individual and that is what we focus on. We get to know your child and what they like/dislike, what they are currently doing, and where we and they see themselves in the future after all this is their journey too.
We want to ensure that we will take each step at your and your child’s pace, this may start with a one-page profile which goes into detail about your child and what we all admire about them, how we are able to support them and what needs they have. From here we are then able to input all this information into what we call a ‘My Plan’ This document goes into more detail on your child’s strengths and what areas we can support them in. Don’t worry we will always talk through each step and document that we fill out on your child. All this will help us to really pin out what we need to be doing to ensure that your child will be able to reach their own individual goals. Our nursery Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) will be able to discuss all of this and many other things with you, such as getting in touch with outside agencies, linking up with special needs settings, and much more.
What we want you to know is that we are here for you and especially your child. We have seen and will continue to see many children with SEN start their journey with us and then transition onto their next steps and we love being a part of this and watching as they develop at their own pace. We have seen builders, mermaids, and football players all transition from us with their dreams insight and we ensure that we support these children to follow these interests and passions as that is what builds confidence and independence.
Please take some time to watch this clip all about having a child with SEN.