OUR CURRICULUM INTENT
intent
At Little Learners’ our intention is to provide a broad and ambitious curriculum for our children which gives them the essential knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life.
We have high aspirations for all of our children and we celebrate each child as an individual to build on what they know as well as providing a breadth of new, rich learning opportunities. This prepares children for their next stage of development and education and enables each unique child to achieve their full potential.
We put the children at the heart of our practice and through our Forest School programme we intend to promote the holistic development of our children by providing exciting outdoor learning opportunities. We aim to inspire our children to develop a love for learning outdoors and exploring through natural learning which extends beyond the classroom. By adopting this holistic approach we intend to emphasise supporting the emotional wellbeing of our children through strong key person relationships. This enables and nurtures them to become happy, confident, independent and well-rounded individuals who are motivated, enthusiastic and love to learn.
implementation
We follow the statutory framework outlined within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 2021 and also use the non-statutory guidance to help up shape our curriculum Development Matters (2021) and Birth to Five Matters (2021). We create exciting educational programmes, experiences and learning opportunities so our children can excel across all 7 areas of learning. We consider how our children like to learn and promote the characteristics of effective learning by providing opportunities to promote:
Playing and exploring
Active learning
Creating and thinking critically.
We consider our children’s interests and incorporate these into our activities and learning experiences as we understand that children learn more effectively when engaged in activities that they are interested in. We adopt a play-based approach to learning and implement our ambitious curriculum through a mixture of:
Child initiated play
Skilfully planned Adult-led activities and experiences
In the moment planning
Montessori-based resources
We encourage the use of loose parts and open-ended resources to offer a wider variety of opportunities by allowing children to think critically and creatively to encourage discovery, collaboration, risk taking and movement.
We promote the physical health, and mental health and wellbeing of our children by offering opportunities to participate in music and movement. We spend a large portion of the day outdoors in the fresh air where children can access our large gardens and covered canopy. Twice a week we use forest school teaching through outdoor learning to develop their personal, social and emotional development and this enables them to become well rounded individuals.
We educate our children on the world around them and actively involve them in our local community including regular walks in the community/parks, visits to local farms, shops and libraries and we invite visitors in to further develop our cultural capital. We encourage children to develop a ‘love of reading’ and support our children to develop their vocabulary, communication and language through stories, songs and circle times.
impact
Our children are highly motivated, curious and enthusiastic learners. They are happy, secure and enjoy their time at Nursery. They have positive attitudes towards play and they have a thirst for learning. They are confident, resilient individuals who have high levels of self-esteem and feel safe and secure. They thrive in social situations and build excellent relationships with their teachers and peers and understand rules and boundaries. They have developed a love of reading and can communicate and use new vocabulary effectively. All children including those with additional needs thrive and children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) achieve the best possible outcomes. All of our children are fully prepared for their next stage of education including their all-important transition to school.
It takes big hearts to shape little minds
