Nightingale Cottage
Our Day
We are open on Mondays and Tuesdays from 10 am to 2 pm, with the expectation that children attend both days. At present, we cater for ages 8–13, but our long-term goal is to expand the age range and grow into a full-time provision.
Our mornings are dedicated to English and maths. Children are split into two ability-based groups, ensuring lessons are matched to their level and needs. In the afternoons, learning becomes more creative and exploratory, with topics such as history, art or science.
Break and lunchtimes are flexible: sometimes we eat while working, sometimes we pause learning to get a burst of fresh air or to enjoy playing in a rainstorm! Wherever possible, we take our learning outside. Research shows that outdoor learning brings wide-ranging benefits — improving concentration, reducing stress, and supporting brain development, creativity and problem-solving skills.
Our Subjects:
Maths
We focus largely on the 'number' objectives from the National Curriculum: these skills form the foundation for nearly all other mathematical concepts. Countries like China, renowned for pupils' high performance in mathematics, emphasise number fluency, ensuring students master these fundamentals before progressing to more advanced topics.
English
Where possible, we give our writing a real-world purpose.
For example:
- writing for our local newspaper
- coming up with the text for social media posts / marketing copy for our enterprise projects
- entering children into competitions (we currently have four published writers!)
- proofreading an author's work
- finding opportunities to display our writing in our local community
Our main aim for reading is to instil a love of literature. When the weather allows, we pick up our camping chairs and head into the woods with our books!
Topic
Children help shape their learning by choosing the topics that interest them most. We’re fortunate to have an in-house engineering teacher, who teaches engineering once a term. Local professionals also visit regularly to enrich and extend what we’re studying. So far, we have worked with a:
- photographer
- artist
- bee keeper
- financial consultant
- business consultant
- gardener
- eco-artist
- doctor
- audio artist/musician
- prosthetic makeup artist
