Curriculum
‘Children learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking both indoors and outdoors.’
We support and actively encourage this throughout all that we do at nursery.
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework exists to support all professionals working in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to help your child, and was developed with a number of early year’s experts and parents. The EYFS framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.
Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:
Personal, social and emotional development;
Physical development; and
Communication and language.
These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.
As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:
Literacy;
Mathematics;
Understanding the world; and
Expressive arts and design.
These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. These activities are planned by the class teacher and your child’s keyworker, to support your child’s unique needs and interests, and are designed to be flexible so that these needs and interests can be met.
The curriculum is play-based, and involves a balance of children self-selecting activities, whole class work, and focused small group activities, which are adult led by the teachers and support staff. Teaching teams carefully observe the children and plan progress for each of them by intervening in play and also through planning targeted teaching to move learning forward.
‘Themes’ through which to deliver the full coverage of the EYFS Framework are identified and developed according to the children’s interests. All staff make continual observations to record the children’s progress; these assessments form an important part of the future curriculum planning.
The Characteristics of effective learning
Everything we offer at nursery is built around the characteristics of effective learning. Children need to be engaged, and motivated in order to think and learn!
Playing and exploring – engagement
Finding out and exploring
Playing with what they know
Being willing to ‘have a go’
Active learning – motivation
Being involved and concentrating
Keeping trying
Enjoying achieving what they set out to do
Creating and thinking critically – thinking
Having their own ideas
Making links
Choosing ways to do things
How do we put this into action?
At nursery we like to do things a little differently from other settings. We have implemented an effective way of meeting children’s individual needs through ‘in the moment planning'.
The underlying principle of planning in the moment is ‘let the children choose what to do, join them and support them.’
As relationships with the children are at the centre of everything we do, all staff are constantly observing children’s needs and areas to develop. These are then woven into the fabric of these immediate responses on a daily basis.
To complement these ‘teachable moments’ we also introduce new and varied experiences for our children. These include embracing the outdoors; we explore and look at the changing outdoor environment throughout the seasons, giving children a sense of the wider world, regardless of the weather.