We follow the EYFS curriculum and focus on the birth to five matters document as a toolkit to support children’s learning. We focus on ensuring that the foundations of learning are deeply embedded for life-long successes.
Within the nursery we follow the child’s interests as a starting point, and we build the curriculum around the child.
We follow a child led planning scheme and staff support children’s learning based around their interests and support learning and development through a wide range of activities. We actively encourage outdoor play, and we go outside in all weathers, so waterproofs and wellies are a must! We actively encourage children to explore their senses through activities, so we always say come dressed in clothes you don’t mind getting messy.
We use several teaching assessment programs to support and assess children’s development, which includes Wellcomm: a speech and language assessment program which we conduct each term on all children to ensure speech and language development remains on target. We have a summerhouse, and we conduct ‘Jigsaw’ in the summerhouse which is a personal, social and emotional program delivered to our pre-school children to help them in expressing their thoughts and feelings verbally which supports the transition into school.
We are active in working with partner agencies to help support future initiatives within early years:
- we are one of five settings taking part in a research project being run by Youth Sport Trust; ‘Healthy Movers’ which is a program to support children develop their physical skills, which also supports their social and emotional wellbeing which has positive effects on their whole development
- we are part of NELI research; a research project being run by OxEd and Assessment to develop children’s language skills
- we are working with an Educational Psychologist trainee from Southampton University who is working with us to develop a toolkit of listening to the child’s voice in assessments.