Little Acorns Nursery
Intent
Children are wonderful little beings who absorb everything they see, hear, and interact with. Our nursery is here to help children on their journey in education, society, and the world. We place great importance on the development of children as individuals and in providing them with the skills, knowledge, and understanding they need to start their journey into big school and society.
Each unique child comes to us with a level of development and experiences that we must see if we are to meet their individual needs in order for them to make progress and thrive. We have high aspirations for all our children which is based on many years of delivering high-quality care and education through an exciting and ambitious curriculum.
Little Acorns Nursery is a child-centred nursery, and we know children learn best through a play-based curriculum which is supported by highly experienced early years practitioners who scaffold and engage children to support their social interactions, language development, and learning.
Our curriculum is not fixed so it cannot be diverted from but will be flexible for those spontaneous moments that happen in the early years setting (planning in the moment) which follows the children’s interests or fascinations.
Inspiration happens when children and adults come together and meet their world and lots of different resources.
This does not mean there is no structure to our day or that adult-led moments do not happen. Adult-led moments are important to our ambitious curriculum in that we want to ensure children have firm foundations in the seven areas of learning and if we want to give them a broader view of the diverse world in which they live, then adults need to plan and teach. Our curriculum is structured to ensure progression in learning, but it is also important in providing a sense of direction to our practitioners.
There are seven areas of learning that all pre-school children need to journey through to ensure their overall learning and development are met. These are found in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (September 2021) they are:
Communication and Language, Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development are prime areas, and Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding of the World, and Expressive Arts and Design are specific areas, and they form the basis of our curriculum.
Our curriculum will be based on the seven areas of learning and the outcomes will influence our curriculum as they show what all children should achieve, but our curriculum will not teach to those outcomes.
Our nursery places great importance on children being outdoors and knows that this is a key component to children being happy, healthy, physically active, and supports positive behaviour.
Block play is also another important feature of our curriculum as it lets children wallow in their own imagination, and supports thinking, ideas, mathematical development, and communication and language.
We also place great importance on children developing independence and good self-care skills which helps build confidence and self-esteem and a can-do attitude.
Time, we feel strongly that children need time to settle and build relationships, those who are not ready talkers need time to build their confidence and self-esteem until they are ready to use their voice, children need time to play, explore and investigate, and time to internalize their learning. Revisiting and having time to explore and find out what they can do is an essential element of self-directed learning.
We intend to work in partnership with parents and carers to ensure children settle, are happy, and enjoy coming to nursery.
Implementation
How we teach what we teach!
Our children learn through a balance of self-directed learning and adult-directed learning. Children interact with carefully planned and well-organised environments both inside and outside, which provide continuous provision, that is carefully enhanced to meet and widen current interests and development needs. Scaffolding is an integral part of our environment and experienced staff interact with children to enhance their learning and skills; often you will see scaffolding taking place between children.
Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside and equal importance is given to learning in both areas. Our daily routine gives security along with the flexibility to ensure that magical moments and children who are deeply engaged in learning or play are not disrupted. We give equal importance to all seven areas of learning and know-how to deliver learning which progresses children’s knowledge, understanding, and skills.
Planning in each area is carefully sequenced to build children’s learning over time and an important feature is the revisiting of learning which ensures children receive depth in their learning and differentiation ensures all children learn. Practitioners plan and teach purposeful learning activities with specific outcomes. Practitioners use a wide range of strategies to ensure all children take part and learn.
The environments and curriculum content are designed to develop the characteristics of effective learning:
● Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
● Active learning – children keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy their achievements.
● Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Parents and practitioners share learning, development and achievements that happen at home and in nursery which helps us to plan, consolidate and deepen knowledge and skills whilst enabling us to meet the needs of the individual child.
Impact
Our curriculum which is ambitious but also balanced and well-structured ensures children have firm foundations in all seven areas of the EYFS and encompasses the wider world in which they live. Our enabling play and learning spaces both inside and outside provide, active and challenging learning environments, where children can develop the skills, knowledge and understanding that enables them to become successful and competent learners. You will always see children actively engaged in play and learning and their enjoyment will be apparent to all.
Our curriculum will help children to have a brilliant start to their educational journey whilst giving them an understanding of the wider world in which they live. The experiences they take part in like visitors coming into nursery, outings, walks into the local community, shared celebrations and events with school, parents coming into the setting all help our children to gain an understanding of the different communities and people who live in their world. We help them learn about different cultures, through food, celebrations, music, dance, art and much more. British values are threaded through all we do. All the aforementioned helps children to make sense of the world around them, to develop tolerance, compassion and an understanding of their rights and the rights of others in an ever-evolving world.
Our children become effective communicators who actively ask questions and use their voices to share their thoughts, feelings and knowledge and understanding of the world. They readily talk about the families and begin to understand the similarities and differences we share.
As our children learn more and gain more skills, they begin to apply this to their future learning across the curriculum.
Everything we offer our children and how practitioners respond to them during play, learning and developing skills ensures children become independent in self-care, build resilience, take risks, enjoy challenges, and become aware of their own abilities.
But most of all our children are happy, friendly towards others, have good social skills and behaviour which helps them to become part of society.
At the end of their time with us our children have a good foundation in the seven areas of learning. They are happy, inquisitive and successful learners with the social skills needed to be part of society.