Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. We support your child and give them the tools they need to manage their own feelings, make relationships and develop self confidence and self awareness. We aim to enable your child to understand their feelings and ensure that they become independent learners in a nurturing environment which helps them feel safe and secure. Children are allowed time to develop personal values and an understanding of who they are and where they fit into the world around them. Opportunities to take turns, to share and help each other, to foster a caring attitude and to become aware of the needs and feelings of others, are carefully planned and used to their full potential.

Communication and language are at the heart of the curriculum in the Early Years Unit and underpin everything we do. Many of our children are learning English as an additional language and they have varied starting points when they come to us. Therefore, a great deal of emphasis is on developing vocabulary and understanding. This is built upon throughout their time in the Early Years enabling children to communicate in a confident way. We aim first to enable your child to become a good listener and provide the tools for every child to become a great communicator. Through lots of speaking and listening games and activities we can ensure that your child plays in a language rich environment where they are constantly encouraged to talk about what they see, what they do and begin to use their own developing knowledge to make new connections and links. We offer Speech, Language and Communication interventions (Early Talk Boost, Talk Boost) to operate as well as our staff receiving highly specialized training and support from external specialists.

Our aim is to develop physical control, mobility, awareness of space and manipulative skills, using both indoor and outdoor environments. Waterproof jackets and trousers are available for the children to enable them to access the outdoor area in all weathers. We feel it is important that children establish positive attitudes towards a healthy and active way of life. Your child will develop many skills such as climbing, sliding, crawling, riding a bike and being able to judge their own and others space. They will develop skills in handling tools and equipment such as pencils, clay tools, knives and forks and brushes. We aim to encourage every child to understand the need to be healthy and what we need to do to stay healthy. As part of their physical development, we also support children to become independent in self-care, from toileting and feeding themselves to dressing themselves independently. We encourage and support children to participate in activities that will raise their heartbeat and be aware of these changes in their bodies.

Your child will enter an environment which is full of print, stories, poems and rhymes. We aim to intrigue children with a wide variety of fiction and non fiction books as well as things that particularly interest your child. Children will have daily phonic sessions which may include listening to sounds in the environment, learning new sounds and blending these sounds to read words. Children are encouraged to be writers both inside and out with most areas having writing equipment attractively placed in them.

Literacy development involves supporting children in beginning to link sounds and letters and learning to read and write. In Nursery, they have key nursery rhymes and favourite 15 texts which combine the nine protected characteristics. We strive to develop a love of reading from the moment the youngest children arrive at our school. Children are encouraged to enjoy books for their personal language development and to extend their views of the world, excite their curiosity and fire their imagination. This also brings tremendous pleasure, expands other play activities and develops concentration and listening skills.

In the Early Years, we want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real-life experiences. We believe that children learn about maths through play and their daily experiences and the more meaningful to them and hands-on it is, the better. We maximise mathematical learning opportunities throughout the daily routines.

As the children’s mathematical understanding grows, staff use their knowledge and expertise to plan for a high-quality learning environment, which provides them with many opportunities to explore different aspects of number and shape, space and measures and learn new concepts. The environment both inside and outside is full of mathematical opportunities and has exciting things for children to explore, sort, compare, count, calculate and describe. Through a combination of direct adult-led teaching and facilitating play or learning independently, staff model a new language and support the children to be creative, critical thinkers, problem solvers and to ‘have a go’.

Children’s knowledge of number will be deepened through real life experiences and things that children understand. They will develop a strong grounding in number. By the end of Reception they should be able to count confidently and have a deep understanding of the numbers to 10 as well as the relationships between numbers such as how many different ways to make 5. They will also have a sound knowledge of shape, space and measure through shape walks, weighing and measuring real things.

Your child will develop a greater knowledge of the world in which they live, helping them to make sense of their physical world and community. They will do this through trips out, visitors coming into school and the use of a broad selection of stories and non-fiction books. In addition, they will foster an understanding of our cultural, social, technological and ecological diverse world. As well as gaining a greater respect of their own and other people’s beliefs. Through a variety of experiences, the children are made aware of themselves, their families and the environment in which they live. 

They are given opportunities to explore and recognise features of living things, objects and events in the natural and man-made world, and to look closely at similarities and differences, patterns and change. They are encouraged to ask questions, to find out why things happen and how things work. 

Young children learn by doing, touching and seeing for themselves – through first-hand experiences. Play that is well planned and exciting helps children to think, increase their understanding and improve their language. It allows children to be creative, to explore and investigate, to experiment and to test out their ideas.

We aim to encourage your child to develop their imagination to its full potential. We want them to discover their own abilities in creativity and use a variety of media in innovative ways. Children learn to draw, paint, cut and create models which demonstrate their growing imaginations. This is achieved through introducing a wider variety of tools & materials to develop their skills and creative thinking. By creating an environment which allows them to independently explore a range of media it allows every child to express themselves in a way that is fun and exciting to them.

Role-play opportunities provide a key part of supporting children’s access to varied experiences so that they develop a greater depth of understanding of the world around them and their place within that world. Children have the opportunity to role-play things they may observe in the home from cooking, cleaning, using the phone, shopping and acting out celebrations, such as birthdays or cultural events. Instruments are freely available inside and outside and children enjoy music-making and singing and dancing.