Magpie
preschool

 

The aim of our curriculum is to make all children feel included, confident, happy, comfortable, resilient, respected and valued. We strive to build strong foundations for our children to equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to explore understand and navigate the wider world around them with kindness, care and an ability to identify their feelings and resolve conflicts peacefully.

 

We believe that children Learn best through (child led) play, with experienced engaged staff that know when to extend and adapt activities and to scaffold learning as and when required. Staff also plan activities around topics that have sparked the children’s interest.

 

We provide a well thought out, free flowing and adaptable learning environment  that incorporates the seven areas of learning, this is at the forefront of every child’s learning experiences, we use the curiosity approach and hygge concept to create thought provoking, interesting and comfortable surroundings for the children to explore, we believe that a rich awe filled setting with a continuous provision based on the children’s interests and different cultures and beliefs is the basis for active learning opportunities and development. 

 

We pride ourselves on offering a comfortable, friendly and welcoming home from home feel at the setting, we have a large garden and wooded area where the children can investigate and be at one with nature.

 

The seven areas of learning from the Early Years curriculum

 Prime areas 

• Personal, social and emotional development

• Communication and language development

• Physical development

Specific areas 

• Literacy

• Mathematics

• Understanding the world

• Expressive Arts and design. 

The characteristics of effective learning are

• Playing and exploring

• Active Learning

• Creating and thinking critically

We want the children to move on from the setting with the tools to be confident to

 

• Use their social skills to play alongside / with other children.

PSED / CL / UW

• Demonstrate friendly behaviour! 

• PSED

• Follow simple instructions. 

           CL

• Manage their own hygiene routines.

           PD

• Eat a varied range of healthy food and understand the importance of exercise. 

PD

• Have a go and keep on trying. 

PSED / PD / L / M

• Talk about and communicate their feelings and resolve conflict without aggression. 

PSED / CL

• Have a sense of identity and understand we are all unique

PSED / CL / UW

• Share their ideas and opinions and listen to others. 

CL / PSED

• Use mathematical language and concepts in play and everyday language.

            M

• take turns.

PSED / CL / M

• Understand the need to be safe.

PSED / PD / UW

• Listen to favourite stories, join in with rhyming and singing. 

L / M / CL / PSED / EAD

• Talk about family customs and special times.

UW / CL

• Explore the environment and have an understanding of living things. 

UW / PD

• Select appropriate resources independently. 

PSED / EAD

• Recognise their name in print.

How we support the children to be confident learners

 

• Provide opportunities for children to get to know each other and work together such as ring games, group discussions, problem solving activities, and adults joining in with role play activities that encourage the children to communicate with each other.

• Provide a range of activities that involve turn-taking and sharing in small groups. Use puppets and props to role play situations.

• Give children small jobs to do, explaining clearly how to carry them out.

• Celebrate the children’s efforts and achievements in toileting by using rewards and praise.

• Discuss the importance for hand washing. 

• Help, explain and Use visuals to teach children how to wash and dry their hands.

• Provide a wide range of healthy snacks and encourage the children to try new foods and to drink plenty of water. 

• Ensure that the children have ample physical exercise by providing free play and adult structured physical opportunities such as obstacle courses, dancing, walks to local attractions and racing and chasing games.

• Encourage children to have their own idea’s, try new activities and take risks, scaffold the children’s learning to help them achieve their goal but don’t take over the situation. 

• We use lots of resources ie, flash cards, books and posters to help the children to recognise different emotions, we talk about what makes us experience these emotions and how best we can deal with them. We encourage children to use picture cards or their words to explain how they are feeling.

• We have key group times where the children benefit from small group activities with their key person.

• We have photos and posters of the children, staff and their families on display as well as pictures of people from all different walks of life.

• We display maps and flags of the country’s that our E,A,L  children come from, and we use Google translate to listen to words and phrases in different languages. 

• Play games which involve listening for a signal, such as ‘Simon Says’, the floor is lava and the freeze song and use ‘ready, steady...go!’

• Encourage children to share their opinions and ideas during play by asking them open ended questions and giving them time to answer.

• We display numbers in the environment using magnets, posters, calculators, telephones, clocks and an interactive number line.

• We have different size, shape and weight items in play area, and we use these to develop mathematical language and understanding. 

• We use number names and language in play ie, counting our steps, playing ‘what’s the-time mr wolf’.

• We label shapes in our environment. 

• We use sand timers to assist children in waiting for their turn. 

• We praise positive behaviour explaining that it makes people happy and discuss how negative behaviours make people feel sad.

• We encourage the children to help keep the setting tidy by giving everyone jobs at tidy up time.

• We talk about and encourage the children to be safe, ie, put crash mats under climbing equipment, sit correctly on chairs, don’t climb on fences and furniture. 

• We use ‘no climbing’ visual signs inside and in the garden.

• We use props to engage children in stories, and have a topic based on a book/interest every half term.

• We use rhyme flash cards to encourage the children to understand rhyming words. 

• We have an interactive song board where children can take turns to select their favourite songs to sing.

• We recognise and celebrate festivals and family customs that are of importance to our cohort, we gather information from parents in our ‘all about me’ forms which the children’s parents complete prior to their child starting with us.

• We have open mornings where parents are invited to stay and play.

• We research and print pictures to show the children how different cultures celebrate. 

• We encourage the children to talk about events that have been special to them such as trips, holidays or visits to/from family and we listen and respond. 

• We share our own personal special events with the children. 

• We have our own fruit and veg plots where the children are actively involved in planting and caring for the crops, we talk about how we need to give them plenty of water to help them grow, the children care for them and eventually pick and eat them.

• We have a bug area in our garden where the children are allowed to dig for worms and search for creepy crawlies under the stones and tyres.

• We enjoy feeding the birds, squirrels and baby rabbits that frequent our garden and forest area.

• We teach the children to handle living things with care and kindness. 

• We use photographs to capture our experience’s. 

• We label our whole environment so children can easily access what they want to play with and understand where items go back to at tidy up time.

• We use low level shelving so children can choose their own resources independently. 

• The children have labelled coat pegs and self-registration cards to help them to learn what their name looks like in print.

• We use additional funding to support children’s needs as identified.

Monitoring and assessment 

• Our ongoing assessments of children are mostly formative, ie, observing extending and adapting activities in the moment. so that we can quickly make a difference to children’s learning. We find this to be very beneficial in encouraging active learning.

 

• Baseline assessments are carried out within a few weeks of a child starting at magpies, this is completed in partnership with parents and is useful to help gauge the child’s starting points and identify any strength’s weaknesses or learning barriers.

 

• We use the milestone assessment sheets as our summative assessment tool, these are completed in partnership with parents, if we find that the children are not developing age-appropriate skills as expected, we decide what interventions to put into place and how to best support the individual child’s learning and development.

 

• We continuously monitor the use of funding for specific groups of children to ensure-that it is beneficial in helping to close learning gaps.

 

Assessment helps with

• the early identification of children and families who may need temporary extra help, and children who may have special educational needs.

• checking that individual children, and groups of children, are making progress and taking prompt action where this is not the case

• reporting formally and involving parents in the statutory 2-year-old progress check

• celebrate children’s achievements with parents and share focus for learning

• discussions with other professionals who may be involved with a child and family. For example, a health visitor or social care worker

• sharing information with receiving schools in the summer so that children can continue their learning journey through the EYFS as seamlessly as possible.