Curriculum Statement

​

INTENT: What we intend to do

Our intention is to provide a rich curriculum offering a variety of rewarding experiences that are crucial for child development. As we know children learn best when they are interested and engaged, we achieve this by offering numerous play opportunities with high quality resources and by referencing the child’s established likes and interests to motivate each child’s curiosity so that they love learning.

​

We understand that children are confident and capable learners able to lead their own learning by developing their own ideas with our practitioners watching and skilfully supporting extended learning alongside the children in their care. Therefore, we intend to use a blend of adult directed activities and provocations and un-interrupted child initiated play to ensure children reach the best possible outcomes.

​

Our setting benefits from an organic orchard populated with many heritage fruit trees, a wild sensory garden complete with slack line and a dedicated Forest School environment which has a child sized allotment, all of which complements our light and airy main interior spaces. We have intentionally created an environment that is stimulating and accessible for all, where children can safely explore risks and challenge their own learning so that the children in our care can blossom into lifelong learners and develop an appreciation of the amazing world we share.

​

Children at The Stacey Pre-School are supported to develop warm and positive relationships with staff and with each other. We are especially proud of the excellent collaborative relationships we maintain with our parents as we believe they hold a crucial role in their children’s education. Our intent is to continue to share regular updates via our on-line learning journal, Tapestry, and to encourage parents to participate in their child’s learning by sharing news, achievements and updates from home with us, by sharing books and resources for children to continue their learning at home and to encourage parents to form supportive relationships with other parents, for example by offering them an opportunity to join our private WhatsApp group which keeps parents in touch with each other during school holidays so that they can arrange to meet up with their children to maintain and build on friendships with their peers.

​

It is our intent to assess children in relation to their progress towards the checkpoints in the Development Matters. Practitioner judgements are made using knowledge acquired from the child’s All About Me document, from consultation with the parents and from talking with the child before they start at our setting and, of course, whilst they attend our setting.

​

We intend to support the continuous assessment process by utilising a “Next Steps” strategy in which the child’s Key Person identifies the next steps in a child’s development and records them in the setting so that all practitioners are aware of where each child is in their learning journey: we share this information with parents so that we can work collaboratively by continuing this strategy at home. It is our intent to provide parents with a termly report, reflecting on their child’s development and celebrating in their achievements. Using this approach also means that the Pre-School team is able to identify any child whose development may benefit from timely additional, or interventional, learning support strategies.

​

Our intent is to prepare children holistically to be resilient learners ready for the next stage in their learning journey when they join their Reception class.

 

IMPLEMENT: How we intend to teach

We implement our curriculum by firstly recognising the importance of continuous provision to support our children in becoming active learners. We give children lots of opportunities to demonstrate this by establishing rewarding and interesting activities, experiences and learning opportunities that assist a child’s development in the 3 Prime Areas of Learning, i.e. Communication and Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional Development – which we apply through the four specific areas of learning: Expressive Arts and Design, Understanding the World, Mathematics and Literacy.

​

We give priority to creating a language rich environment by creating lots of opportunities for nursery rhymes, songs and stories and ensuring quality interactions between the children and staff. We operate our own library for children to borrow from a range of quality fiction and non-fiction books and we encourage parents to read these with their children at home and to comment in our “Reading Adventures” diary that travels home with Fable, The Stacey Pre-School mascot.

​

We invite parents and members from our local community to visit our setting to share different life experiences and to join in with the children’s learning to promote the importance of community, diversity and inclusivity to all children. We encourage all parents to participate in sessions with their child.

​

We establish a baseline of all children’s starting points on entry to our setting and use the child’s 2 Year Progress Check  which is carried out between the ages of 24-36 months. Further developmental judgements are made by practitioners using a process of ongoing observation and continuous assessment to inform the planning of the child’s individual curriculum as they move on to next steps in teaching and learning throughout the year.

​

Our Curriculum has been developed to ensure the core provision meets all children’s needs, ignites their curiosity and sustains their engagement. We will implement the teachings of our curriculum using the following models:

​

In The Moment: This approach supports high quality engagement between practitioner and the child and are led by the child’s unique interests. Practitioners skilfully identify valuable teachable moments in the child’s play and interactions. In this way practitioners can identify and plan for next steps to be met as the approach is easily adapted.

​

Curiosity Approach: As well as traditional and purposeful teaching resources, we also use resources and materials from the natural and home environments to ignite curiosity and encouraging learning; ranging from pine cones, twigs, flowers, leaves to wooden shapes, honey dibbers, pots and pans, crates, tubing and tyres to typically household resources such as telephones, cooking utensils, laptops, ornaments, etc.

​

Adult-lead Activities: Every childcare session begins with Circle Time in which the whole Pre-School joins together to welcome each other and to discuss the immediate environment contextually, for example by talking about the weather, seasonal celebrations, or with the children sharing experiences from their week. We use Focus Time, to work in smaller groups lead by the child’s Key Person, as opportunities to consolidate learning for example in number recognition or maths skills. We hold regular curriculum enriching activities during our sessions including:  Boogie Mites, Children’s Yoga, PE, gardening in the allotment as well as our regular Forest School activities that include den building, mini beast hunts, firepit cooking, and more.

​

Seasonal Based Approach to Learning: We adopt a topic for each half term to reflect seasonal changes, cultural festivals or national days of celebration and observance, in which we contextualise respect for our planet, its resources and its inhabitants. We often adapt our curriculum in response to the children in our setting by following their interests and letting them take the lead in their learning so that our curriculum and the activities we offer are always dynamic and flexible.

 

We expand on this seasonal approach to learning by engaging with the local and wider community, for example by supporting national charitable events or by participating in the annual Christmas tree decoration competition hosted by the local non-denominational church.

In these ways, we embed core British values in all that we do by using selected stories, songs and engaging activities and linking these with the universal themes of kindness, tolerance and respect.

 

IMPACT : The results of our teaching

Based on their unique starting points, all children will make good developmental progress academically, socially and emotionally and will be able to demonstrate transferable skills needed for reception year and beyond which will typically include:

​

• Enjoying listening attentively and responding with comprehension to familiar stories and rhymes.

• Being independent in managing their own personal care e.g. using the toilet, washing their hands, able to dress themselves with minimal support and being able to feed themselves from their lunchbox or at the lunch table.

• Demonstrating a positive attitude to learning through high levels of curiosity and enjoyment and by sustaining their attention for extended periods of time.

• Increasingly being able to self-regulate their emotions and to be able to communicate these to an adult.

• Using their early phonics teachings (listening, speaking and vocabulary skills) to recognise that words have meaning, that words are formed using the alphabet and to recognise their name in print.

• Using their early number recognition skills to count and identify numbers 1-20.

• Using their early maths skills to identify 2D shapes and some 3D shapes, to be able to use early mathematical language such as ‘more than’ or ‘fewer’ or ‘longer’ or ‘shorter’ etc.

• Recognising familiar school routines, e.g. washing hands before lunch, putting toys away at the end of the day, answering ‘yes’ to the register being taken.

• Recognising the importance of turn taking and sharing and of being kind to others.

• Being sensitive to other’s feelings.

• Beginning to recognise the importance of keeping healthy i.e. regular tooth brushing, hand washing, eating nutritious foods, etc.

• Demonstrating pride in their achievements.

​

This will be achieved by: 

​

• Each child having multiple opportunities to engage with a broad curriculum

• Maintaining ambitious goals for each child’s learning and by ensuring high quality teaching and continuous assessment which ensures each child receives the correct support at the correct stage of their development.

• Encouraging each child to be engaged during Circle Time where we share stories, songs and rhymes together.

• Involving parents in their child’s learning and encouraging learning to be supported in the home environment, for example by providing “Ready For School Sacks” as a learning resource for Pre-School leavers.

• Encouraging and planning for high quality child initiated play experiences which result in a high level of child engagement.

• Ensuring children feel happy, safe and excited to come to The Stacey Pre-School.

• Providing Termly and End of Year reports to evidence the impact of our teaching, to identify any further learning support that a child may need to maximise their potential, and to reflect on the many milestones and achievements that the children in our care achieve.

 

 

​

​

The Stacey Pre-School

(revised 20.10.23)

​