Our Curriculum

Intent

Bugbrooke Pre-school strive to provide an environment that is meaningful and relevant to all children and their individual interests, allowing them to gain the knowledge and skills they need to continue to move onto their next steps in their learning journey.

Parents and carers are valued as our most important influencer of their child’s development. Therefore, we seek to collaborate with parents through our key person system to ensure the best possible outcomes for their child. By the sharing of information, we are able to gain an insight into their social and cultural backgrounds to make a child feel happy, safe, and secure.

Our curriculum incorporates our settings ethos and vision of Exploration and Investigation as this allows the children to learn by leading their own play. As a setting we want to incorporate into our ethos the contemporary issues of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter, ensuring that children’s voices are heard and discussed to ensure the setting is inclusive.

Our Aims

• To provide high quality education and care for all children regardless of race, faith, gender, background and ability.
• To provide a happy, fun, safe, secure environment which is inviting, stimulating, and friendly
• To deliver a broad, balanced, appropriate, and differentiated curriculum by responding to children’s needs and interests through observations, discussions with parents and through in the moment planning
• To encourage self-esteem, confidence, self-discipline, determination, flexibility, and independence
• To encourage positive mindsets and dispositions towards children’s learning
• To encourage children to explore, appreciate and respect their environment
• To prepare children with knowledge, skills and understanding so that they are confident and ready for their next stage in their learning journey.

At Pre-school we understand that cultural capital is essential for children’s success in the future. Therefore, we ensure that we are giving children the best possible start to their early years education by developing an understanding about their community as well as the wider world, learning about values and cultures of others including backgrounds and differing experiences of learning and play – Fundamental British values.

During our sessions we give children the opportunities to build on their communication and language through extensive opportunities that are embedded into our practice in many different ways such as gestures, rhymes, storytelling, and role play whereby these are supported and modelled by practitioners. We also focus on this throughout our daily interactions whereby children can share their ideas with others.

Our curriculum celebrates diversity, children’s mindfulness, Personal and Social Emotional Development (PSED) this is encouraged throughout the session and through group times to encourage children to be confident in their own abilities and in exploring feelings, and friendships leading to happy, healthy, safe, and secure children which is important for attachments that are essential for their social world and cognitive development.

Our Pre-school Curriculum incorporates the Statutory framework requirements for the Early Years Foundation Stage including various experiences and opportunities that enhance the children’s interest and all-round development including their dispositions to learn through the characteristics of effective learning.  Our intention is to provide the curriculum through child – initiated play and activities with others. Incorporating interactions with staff through planned group activities whereby staff are facilitating their learning and providing challenges to help children to build on what they already know ensuring children are making progress.

Implementation:

Bugbrooke Pre-school children have the time and space to have the freedom to play, which allows them to process thought and be curious and creative learners. This is guided through the three characteristics of effective teaching and learning which enables practitioners to reflect on the individual child and facilitating this for differing rates of development.

Playing and exploring: Engagement – Practitioners provide & encourage:

• Children to explore the world around them and by helping them as needed but without taking over or directing.
• Making sure resources are relevant to children’s particular interests & abilities
• Curiosity about objects, events, and people
• Role play – pretending an object are things from their own experiences helping to develop stories with others.
• A ‘can do’ attitude so they feel safe & confident to take a risk with new ideas and have a go
• Creating an environment where children have fun & laugh that deepens their learning

Active learning – Children will be able to:

• Maintain focus for a period of time
• Show high levels of involvement, energy & fascination
• Persisting with an activity when challenges occur
• Bouncing back after difficulties
• Being proud of how they accomplished something – not just the end result

Creating and thinking critically – Children are able to:

• Have their own ideas
• Finding new ways to do things
• Making links and noticing patterns in their experiences
• Testing their ideas & enjoy their achievements
• Making predictions

Communication and language

We provide a language rich environment whereby the children are read to frequently either within the sessions time or through adult focus group times. This gives the children and the adults the time to have conversations and share their interest about the stories, rhymes and poems building on children’s language effectively. Some children have focus books that they have shown a huge interest in, and we re-tell these, children become familiar with the text and are able to re-tell them which helps increase their vocabulary.

Personal, Social & Emotional Development

To enhance and support our children’s emotions and develop a sense of self and how to look after our bodies with have incorporated child’s yoga to explore mindfulness so it can help children make good friendships, co -operate and resolve conflicts calmly leading to happy healthy lives.

Outdoor learning

We actively promote outdoor learning as an essential part of child’s physical development and health. It allows children to come close with nature using it for creativity and exploring the seasons. It gives the space and freedom for children who learn best through being active and extending risky play. Our children have continuous access to the outdoors regardless of certain weather conditions.

Our nature bug walks that we have been incorporated into our curriculum allowing the children to explore & investigate their local community. The children have the chance to observe, make decisions find out about people, animals, places and how things change.  

Creativity:

Our children are provided with an environment that allows them to express themselves creatively. Messy play is huge part of our children’s creative learning. They have the opportunities to play with sand, water, playdough, clay and our outdoor mud kitchen lends itself to an array of sensory experiences such as smell, touch and occasional tasting. The process of making mud pies, herbal teas & hot chocolate is more about the thought process than the end result.

Impact

At Bugbrooke Pre-school we see every child as unique and valued, they all have the potential to achieve.  Our children are independent, helpful, caring, polite and cooperative.

Our curriculum ensures that it meets the needs of individual children including those with SEND, EAL, disadvantaged and those who receive Early Years Pupil Premium. Within the learning environment targeted support is in place for individuals where appropriate. This is where we can see impact making positive outcomes for children with learning differences.

The children’s differing starting points, are all seen to make good progress by accessing our curriculum using our professional judgement along with communication with parents to extend their learning allowing them to be fully prepared for transitions schools and have the knowledge and understanding to become long life learners.