Reception

Starting school is a big step. Trying to find an environment where  your child can grow and flourish can be stressful, but here at Ditcham, we do everything we can to make it easy for you and your child. We’ve recently launched our ‘Starting School’ booklet to help parents navigate this transition and we’ve produced some helpful Podcasts in our Happy Success series on topics such as coping with change, managing sleep routines and helping your child to read. These are freely available to everyone and

Our Early Years at Ditcham Park School offers a happy, warm and caring atmosphere where children are free to discover and learn at their own pace. We have beautiful, bright and spacious inside and outside classrooms which are well resourced to support child generated and teacher-led topics.

We deliberately keep our class size small in Reception to provide the children with a high level of individual attention that promotes progress. The class is staffed by a fully qualified and experienced EYFS specialist teacher, with a full-time Level 3 teaching assistant ensuring every child is given the support they need to flourish in Early Years.

Our topic-based curriculum is wide and varied, with the flexibility to tailor the topics to individual interests. We believe that children learn best by doing and are enabled through investigative activities, with a strong emphasis on both directed and free play. By being so thoroughly immersed and involved in the learning experience they acquire confidence and security to explore their world and by providing a stimulating and motivating environment, we make learning a positive and rewarding experience!

Ditcham Park School is set in the most beautiful grounds, perched on the top of the South Downs National Park and we take our learning outside as much as possible. We go for long, seasonal walks in all sorts of weather, looking for bluebells in the spring, hunting for mini-beasts in the summer, painting leaves of green, orange, red and yellow in the autumn and, of course, making snowmen in the winter! Our Reception children have an outside classroom and play area that is just for them as well as access to the wooded playgrounds, fields and all-weather courts. There’s no bad weather at Ditcham, just bad shoe choices! Wellies and waterproof suits are a must…

Even in Reception, our children enjoy a range of school trips.  We are very fortunate in our location as it means we are within an easy reach of many wonderful, educational sites of interest such as Alice Holt Forest, Butser Ancient Farm, Whitewool farm at Meon Springs, Southsea Model Village, the Blue Reef Aquarium and more! Visits vary according to the interests of the children; such is the flexibility we can offer.

Ditcham Park is renowned for being a family school and our whole-school site means that we have strong links with the nursery and senior areas of the school. Senior pupils often choose to help in the Reception classroom as part of their activity choices associated with the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme and even our older Junior children enjoy spending time with their younger peers helping with reading and games.

The Ditcham Community is a strong one and we welcome and encourage parental involvement within the Reception Class. We believe our team includes the children, parents and staff; we all want to learn together in this wonderful school where every child, and adult, is truly known and valued.