Our curriculum is designed to support children to be curious, social, independent young people who are happy, confident and engaged in their learning through delivering child focused, varied and rich experiences based on children s individual needs and interests. Our aim is to ensure every child reaches their own potential whilst nurturing their health and well-being. We take much of our time being led by the children in open-ended experiences, where the children are able to choose what they would like to do from the variety of activities and resources made available. This runs alongside our pre-planned termly topic and individualized keyworker planning, where staff continuously reflect on their practice to enhance further learning activities.

Our curriculum takes into account the 4 principles of the Early Years Foundation   Stage, Birth to Five Matters, Pedagogical and Holistic approaches.  

Effective Pedagogy – ensuring a well planned learning environment (inside and out) where inputting a mix of different approaches – play, adult’s modelling, guided learning and observing each other allows us to deliver high quality teaching

Holistic Approaches – the connectedness of mind, body and spirit. Key workers pay attention to children’s physical, personal, social, emotional and spiritual well-being (as well as cognitive aspects of learning). Our belief in deeper early learning is much more important than covering lot’s of different things in a superficial way. Children’s learning is often driven by their interests and plans need to be flexible. Babies and young children do not develop in a fixed way, their development is like a spiders web with many strands – not a straight line, so key worker knowledge is vital 

The 4 principles of the EYFS

1. Children are ‘unique and competent learners’
2. Adults and children develop ‘positive relationships’
3. The ‘learning environment’ is rich and varied
4. Children all learn at different rates and all areas of learning are important and  inter-connected.

The seven curriculum areas define What the children learn and we place an emphasis on How the children learn as defined by the Characteristics of Effective Learning

Next steps are ongoing and recorded on the child s individual Play Plan and activities and experiences are planned by the child s keyworker to challenge, stretch and support their achievement.

We work in partnership with parents and share the What to Expect When booklet when a child first starts, encouraging parents to share their knowledge of their child s development and giving us a baseline to immediately start developing and progressing from. This is then continued throughout their time with us with the request to complete the parent partnership forms on a termly basis as well as the offer of termly Parents Meetings and regular Stay and Play sessions where there is the opportunity for parents to play and learn alongside their child.

We incorporate enrichment activities with regular Arts and Crafts, Cooking, Forest school, local visits & environment, story time at the library and Physical sessions across all 3 rooms.

We promote the British Values of Individual Liberty, Rule of Law, Democracy and Mutual Respect through our everyday routines, our high but realistic, values and expectations and through the celebration of different cultures and faiths.

Signing and Somerset Total Communication is used throughout the setting to develop and encourage an inclusive environment and signs of the week are shared with parents.

We encourage free-flow between the indoor and outdoor environment as an important element of our delivery allowing the children to make choices for themselves as to where they wish to develop their learning.

Through using the Colour Monster book, we aim to support children to understand their feelings and emotions and give them the language they need to express these feelings. We Support children to self-regulate their own behaviour through identified reflection areas, giving them a quiet space to get in touch with their emotions and later make time to discuss these feelings and responses.

INTENT – What do we want to achieve?
Happy, confident, engaged learners

IMPLEMENTATION – How do we do it?
through provision of carefully planned, developmentally appropriate activities and environment

IMPACT – What impact does this have?
Steady ongoing progress for each child tracked through Tapestry