We start every morning with Movement Circle. The children and teachers come together to practice a series of slow continuous exercises based on some of the principles of Tai Chi and Energy balancing. These help the children to become focused, improving co-ordination and preparing everyone for the day's activities.

After lunch every day the whole school lies down for Quiet Time. We are all still and silent, either listening to music or doing a simple meditation. This gives the children an important pause after playtime to focus and reenergise for the afternoon's activities. When our Alexander Teacher is at school she works on the children at this time with the help of two three of the older children

Our concern is always with the holistic and balanced development of our children. Evidence shows that what we drink and eat affects brain and body function as well as the way we learn and behave. At Educare we want children to be able to make their own choices about what they eat and drink with an understanding of which choices are the best for them and why.

Each child keeps a named water bottle at school and is encouraged to drink frequently through the day to keep their brains and bodies hydrated. In addition, without being prescriptive, we feel we should influence what children bring to school in their lunch boxes. We have the following expectations for children's lunches and we hope that parents will support us:

• A balanced lunch meal with fruit and vegetables.
• A minimum of processed food

Creative arts have a special emphasis at Educare because they allow our children to release and express themselves and to learn and practise skills which they need in their daily lives. We dedicate equal time during the week to art, music and drama and every year we choose one area to celebrate and bring in a specialist to work with the children for our OASIS Day.

Friday is 'music day'. The morning is taken up by individual piano lessons and group-work with recorders. In the instrumental lessons the priorities are developing the children's ability to express themselves through their music making, both in free-style improvising and composing and formal skills such as reading musical notation and finger-exercises to develop technique. The afternoon consists of class practical musical lessons. The Kindergarten lessons are taken up by singing songs, to develop pitch, rhythm and social music-making, music and movement, expressing musical elements physically, and rudimentary notational skills. For this Sally bases her teaching on the Kodaly system. The older children carry on developing these skills in their lessons and perform regularly in the summer music concert, Harvest circle and Christmas concert.

It is crucial for Kindergarten children to experience the wider world. We do a number of field trips over the school year and these support learning when doing the topic work. This year the Kindergarten have been to:

• The Library
• Pizza Express to make pizzas
• Horton Park Farm
• Waitrose
• Kew Gardens

For the Hall children the visits give access to resources and exhibitions and further learning around the topic. Actual experience is the easiest and quickest way for children to gain knowledge. Travel from Kingston station and small groups make it easy to go whenever.

This year the Hall children have been to:

• Primary Proms at the Albert Hall
• The Launch Pad at the Science Museum
• Museum at the Bank of England
• Dora Gordine sculpture workshop at Kingston Heritage Museum
• British Library workshop- Henry VIII writing and times
• Orange Tree Theatre workshop and performance of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
• V and A Museum of Childhood - Bethnal Green
• Workshop on 'Animals and their homes' Holly Lodge Richmond Park

Text to come.