We provide a safe, caring and stimulating environment into which your child can develop. We treat and respect everyone as an individual. We recognise the importance of a strong partnership formed between your child, yourself and our Pre-school. We promote fun learning through various activities, planning, resources, positive interactions and clear expectations.

If you would like your child to attend our Pre-school, please get in touch with our Manager, Jo Lucas at preschool@southmead.devon.sch.uk calling our Pre-School: 01271 813511 or by using the following address:

Southmead Pre-School

Wrafton Road,

Braunton,

North Devon,

EX33 2BU

Southmead Pre-School admits:

• Eligible government funded two-year-olds from the start of the term following their second birthday.

• Early Years Education funded three and four-year-olds from the start of term following their third birthday.

• Non-funded three and four-year-olds from their third birthday.

• Non-funded two-year-olds from their second birthday. 

See our Admissions Policy and Prospectus at the bottom of the page.

Please click the links below to find out about:

• Registering at our Pre-School
• Our Team
• How We Work
• Our Website

From September 2023, Southmead Pre-School will be led by Southmead Primary School Governing Board. We will be working closely with Mr Plumb and his team to ensure that any future transitions are positively beneficial to your children.

Information Regarding September 2023 Starters

We hope you are looking forward to joining us in September. For some of you it is a return visit with a younger sibling and for some it will the first time you will be meeting us, but rest assured your children very quickly settle into our Pre-School.

Staff team

Manager - Jo Lucas

Early Years Practitioners - Annie, Jo Davey, Hannah and Karen.

When you join us, you will be assigned a key person from the staff team whose job it is to make sure your child settles in quickly and supports them in their learning and development journey whilst they are with us. We will let you know who your key person will be at the start of the term. If you are returning to us with a younger sibling you will stay with your key person and continue forming a working partnership with them. 

Access

• Please use the lower green gate accessed from the direction of Braunton Academy car park.
• The gate will be locked until just before 9am.
• Jo Lucas (or another member of staff) will wait at the bottom of the Pre-School ramp. The plan is that the children will soon independently carry their own belongings into Pre-School and walk up the ramp by themselves.
• For the first session, you may bring your child into Pre-School and take them straight outside to our play area and then leave them there. It is best to be flexible about this as each child is an individual. Our staff will be there to support you and take any children that may be upset.
• After drop off, please make your way back to the lower gate where our staff member will let you out. This is due to security reasons and the Primary School starting their lessons at 8.50am and we do not wish to disturb the school children’s lessons.
• At the midday drop off or collection, please wait outside the locked lower gate . The staff will bring over children going home or collect children coming in from there.

Lunch time

• Please provide your child with a packed lunch and water bottle and ensure their lunch box and bottles are named due to the dangers of allergies and to prevent spreading germs. Please supply cutlery or a spoon with their lunch box.
• Please note we do not allow lunches containing nuts including peanut butter sandwiches.
• We encourage children to eat savoury, vegetables and fruit first. If your child doesn’t eat sandwiches, crackers, a slice of pizza, dips and breadsticks etc are great alternatives as well as beans, pasta or leftovers.
• We have a microwave. Please put your child’s meal into a microwavable container and let us know how long you would like us to heat it up for. 
• We initially help and then as part of their independence, encourage them to put their lunch onto our plates and to pour their drinks into a beaker during lunch times.

Snack time

At our mid-morning snack time we provide your child with a choice of milk or water to drink which they pour into a beaker themselves as part of hand/eye co-ordination practice. We also provide fruit and vegetables as a small snack.

Drinks

Please send in a named water bottle for your child each day. We would prefer it filled with water but if they won’t drink it please send in thinly diluted juice. The children will be encouraged to drink and re-fill their own bottles from the water tap if empty. It is amazing how much they drink as they love to re-fill their bottles independently.

Toilets

• We have 2 small child sized toilets for those children who are toilet trained. If your child is in nappies, please can you put them in pull ups. As part of our toileting routines after the mid-morning snack and after lunch we take all children to the toilet.
• If your child is in pull ups, please provide a separate named changing bag. You will need to provide pull ups, nappy sacks and wet wipes as we do not have them. Soiled nappies/pull ups will be returned to you at the end of the session as we do not have disposal facilities for them. When the changing bag runs empty our staff will let you know so you can refill it.

Clothing

• Please send in wellies and waterproof dungarees that we can use each day. We are outside for the majority of the day regardless of weather. Our outdoor classroom floor is made of a soft crumb material. You will find that the knees and bottoms of your child ‘s clothes pick up grey/black marks from it. We also have a garden area as well as a much-loved mud play area, all accessible to your child regardless of the weather.
• Our uniform is not mandatory however may save well-loved favourite clothes. Our uniform colour is red and many supermarkets sell red jumpers, red or white polo shirts and red checked or grey dresses as well as hard wearing trousers or jogging bottoms. It is advisable not to send in best clothing as our children get busy, mucky and wet regardless of wearing aprons at certain activities. We want them to learn through play rather than worry about staying tidy.
• Please name all your child’s clothing as they can struggle to remember what they were wearing!!! We can send the waterproof clothing back home each day if wished for evenings and weekends.

Medicine

If your child has an inhaler, epi-pen etc you will need to fill in a medication form before we are allowed to administer any medication.

Address / Mobile phones

If you think you may have changed phone numbers, moved, or permissions on who is able to collect your child please can you email me so I can amend your registration forms.

Extended Hours

If you have applied for the extra hours up to 30, you should have received an 11-digit code which you would have passed onto Pre-School. This code can only be used from September if we receive it before the 31st of August and add it to the portal operated by Devon County Council. We must make you aware that you will be invoiced for any extra hours not covered by the funding. Please see below our 38-week academic year showing our term dates.

We are looking forward to meeting you all in September. Have a wonderful summer and we will see you from Monday 4th September.