Curriculum

The provision for children's development and learning is guided by The Early Years Foundation Stage (DCFS 2007). From September 2008 the Early Years Foundation Stage became law.

This brings together Birth to Three Matters and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage.  Our provision reflects the four key themes and 16 commitments of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

A Unique Child Child Development: Skilful communicator, competent learner. Inclusive Practice: Equality and diversity, children’s entitlements, early support. Keeping Safe: Being safe and protected, discovering boundaries, making choices. Health and Well-being: Growth and developing, physical and emotional wellbeing.

Positive Relationships Respecting Each Other: Understanding feelings, friendship, professional relationships. Parents as Partners: Respecting diversity, communication, learning together. Supporting Learning: Positive interactions, listening to children, effective teaching. Key Person: Secure attachment, shared care, independence.

Enabling Environments Observation, Assessment and Planning: Starting with the child, planning, assessment. Supporting Every Child: Children’s needs, the learning journey, working together. The Learning Environment: The emotional environment, the outdoor environment, the indoor environment. The Wider Context: Transitions and continuity, multi-agency working, the community.

Learning and Development Play and Exploration: Learning through experience, adult involvement, contexts for learning. Active Learning: Mental and physical involvement, decision making, personalised learning. Creativity and Physical Thinking: Making connections, transforming and understanding, sustained shared thinking. Areas of Development and Learning.

How we provide for development and learning

Children start to learn about the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by our Pre-School helps children to continue to do this by providing all of the children with interesting activities that are appropriate for their age and stage of development.

The Areas of Development and Learning comprise: personal, social and emotional development; communication, language and literacy development; problem solving, reasoning and numeracy; knowledge and understanding of the world; physical development; and creative development.

For each area, the practice guidance sets out the Early Learning Goals. These goals state what it is expected that children will know and be able to do by the end of the reception year of their education.

The practice guidance also sets out in ‘Development Matters’ the likely stages of progress a child makes along their learning journey towards the early learning goals. Our Pre-School has regard to these matters when we assess children and plan for their learning.

Personal, social and emotional development

Our programme supports children to develop:

• positive approaches to learning and finding out about the world around them;
• confidence in themselves and their ability to do things, and valuing their own achievements;
• their ability to get on, work and make friendships with other people, both children and adults;
• their awareness of, and being able to keep to, the rules which we all need to help us to look after ourselves, other people and our environment;
• their ability to dress and undress themselves, and look after their personal hygiene needs; and
• their ability to expect to have their ways of doing things respected and to respect other people's ways of doing things.

Communication, language and literacy

Our programme supports children to develop:

• conversational skills with one other person, in small groups and in large groups to talk with and listen to others;
• their vocabulary by learning the meaning of - and being able to use - new words;
• their ability to use words to describe their experiences;
• their knowledge of the sounds and letters that make up the words we use;
• their ability to listen to, and talk about, stories;
• knowledge of how to handle books and that they can be a source of stories and information;
• knowledge of the purposes for which we use writing; and
• making their own attempts at writing.

Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy

Our programme supports children to develop:

• understanding and ideas about how many, how much, how far and how big;
• understanding and ideas about patterns, the shape of objects and parts of objects, and the amount of space taken up by objects;
• understanding that numbers help us to answer questions about how many, how much, how far and how big;
• understanding and ideas about how to use counting to find out how many; and
• early ideas about the result of adding more or taking away from the amount we already have.

Knowledge and understanding of the world

Our programme supports children to develop:

• knowledge about the natural world and how it works;
• knowledge about the made world and how it works;
• their learning about how to choose, and use, the right tool for a task;
• their learning about computers, how to use them and what they can help us to do;
• their skills on how to put together ideas about past and present and the links between them;
• their learning about their locality and its special features; and
• their learning about their own and other cultures.

Physical development

Our programme supports children to develop:

• increasing control over the large movements that they can make with their arms, legs and bodies, so that they can run, jump, hop, skip, roll, climb, balance and lift;
• increasing control over the small movements they can make with their arms, wrists and hands, so that they can pick up and use objects, tools and materials; and
• their understanding about the importance of, and how to look after, their bodies.

Creative development

Our programme supports children to develop:

• the use of paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play to express their ideas and feelings; and
• their interest in the way that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play can be used to express ideas and feelings.

Learning through play

Play helps young children to learn and develop through doing and talking, which research has shown to be the means by which young children learn to think.  Our Pre-School uses the practice guidance Early Years Foundation Stage to plan and provide a range of play activities which help children to make progress in each of the areas of learning and development. In some of these activities children decide how they will use the activity and, in others, an adult takes the lead in helping the children to take part in the activity. In all activities information from the practice guidance to the Early Years Foundation Stage has been used to decide what equipment to provide and how to provide it.

The Importance of Play

Well planned play, both indoors and outdoors, is a key way in which young children learn with enjoyment and challenge.  In playing, they behave in different ways:  sometimes their play will be boisterous, sometimes they will describe and discuss what they are doing, sometimes they will be quiet and reflective as they play.  Through play children can develop, for example, the confidence needed for learning; the social skills needed for personal development; and the skills needed for writing.  In this way your child will become more independent and will be able to tackle simple problems.

Play also strengthens the imagination, through play children are able to exercise and consolidate their ability to understand and to develop and strengthen their concentration.

Creative play supports physical, emotional and social development and allows children to learn through investigation, exploration and discovery.  It encourages children to become inventive and adaptable.

At every Langham Pre-School session there will be free play during which the children can choose independently from such activities as:

painting	drawing
water and sand play	sticking
table top games and puzzles	book corner
dressing-up	play dough
imaginative play in the home corner

A list of topics is produced each half-term with a theme and our main activities are based on this.

The session

We organise our sessions so that the children can choose from, and work at, a range of activities and, in doing so, build up their ability to select and work through a task to its completion. The children are also helped and encouraged to take part in adult-led small and large group activities, which introduce them to new experiences and help them to gain new skills, as well as helping them to learn to work with others.

The children are given the opportunity to experience physical activity using a variety of play resources inside the
hall or in our enclosed outside play area.  Outdoor activities contribute to children’s health, their physical
development and their knowledge and understanding of the world around them.

The setting's timetable and routines

Langham Pre-School believes that care and education are equally important in the experience, which we offer children. The routines and activities that make up the day in the setting are provided in ways that:

• help each child to feel that she/he is a valued member of the setting;
• ensure the safety of each child;
• help children to gain from the social experience of being part of a group; and
• provide children with opportunities to learn and help them to value learning.

Assessment

We assess how young children are learning and developing by observing them frequently. We use information that we gain from observations, as well as from photographs of the children, to document their progress and where this may be leading them. We believe that parents know their children best and we ask them to contribute to assessment by sharing information about what their children like to do at home and how they as parents are supporting development.

We make periodic assessment summaries of children’s achievement based on our ongoing development records. These form part of children’s records of achievement. We undertake these assessment summaries at regular intervals as well as times of transition, such as when a child moves into a different group or when they go on to school.