Our Curriculum

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Great emphasis is placed on the Personal, social and emotional development of each child. This involves supporting and developing the children’s overall well-being, attitudes to learning, social skills, attention skills, and self esteem. The importance we place on this helps each child to separate from their main carer and feel secure in the Nursery; it helps with sharing, turn taking and being fair; celebrating success and achievements. It focuses on talking through what is right and wrong, helping the children to resolve problems for themselves with our support and uses pretend play, stories and speaking and listening. It aims to give children independence so that they have the skills to plan to make choices – initially about play, but eventually about life long learning.

Communication, Language and Literature

This area of our curriculum aims to teach the children a number of skills and give them the confidence to use them, providing opportunities to encourage speaking and listening, and to develop early reading and writing skills. Staff create learning opportunities, encourage children to try new things and support them in their efforts, talking and communicating with children all the time. Children have many opportunities to speak and listen in different situations, they are read a wide variety of books and are encouraged to make marks and write for different purposes. We have lots of lovely resources to make this area of learning fun so that children develop a love of Literacy, including our school library.

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy

This area of the curriculum includes counting, sorting, matching, patterns, making connections, problem solving, working with numbers, shapes, space and measures. We know this sounds an awful lot to get through, but there is maths in everything we do from cooking to modelling; building to playing with water; even tidying up. As well as encouraging and talking about this we also have a maths table with a selection of activites changed regularly.

Creative Development

This area of our curriculum includes: art, music, dance, role-play and imaginative play. Everyday there are activities planned to let children be themselves and express themselves. We love to explore and develop our creativity using a full range of materials, including working on the easels, modelling table, dressing up and two role play areas. We enjoy singing and playing with instruments as well as using the hall for ring games and dance. Have a look at our classroom displays linked to our topics or to children’s interests and lots of messy things to do!

Physical Development

We are lucky to be able to use the school hall for gymnastics, games and apparatus work. It is a lovely large space for moving around in, wtih lots of great equipment. We spend a lot of time each day being active, and weather permitting we get outside every day. Outdoors we provide the children opportunities to play on wheeled vehicles, climb and slide, play further with PE equipment and explore the garden. This combination of planned PE and freer outside play means that children's large body movements develop and small body movements become more controlled, all of which prepares them for going on to school. Taking of our shoes and socks for PE helps make the children independent and that makes going into school when the time comes much easier. We also develop the children's fine motor skills by learning to tear, cut, sew, and manipulate different materials.

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

This area of the curriculum is all about developing your child’s understanding about the world in which they live – and how they make sense of it. It leads on to work in science, technology, design, history and geography. It is what children love doing most – investigating, trying things out and being curious. We try to do this in as practical a way as possible – so we try things out, set out problems to solve, and give children time in which to explore. The children are able to experience a wide range of computer activities too, including both adult led and free play with our smartboard.

You can find out lots more about the Foundation Stage Curriculum by going on to the DFES website www.dfes.gov.uk. Or ask us more when you visit.

Please go to our half term plan for more details.