Our Curriculum
Our Curriculum
The Early Years Foundation Stage
Every child is encouraged to acheive the five Every Child Matters outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieveing, making a positive contribution and achieving economic wellbeing. This is promoted at ABC Kindergarten LTD through the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS).
The EYFS is based around four themes:
1. Unique Child
2. Positive Relationships
3. Enabling Environments
4. Learning and Development
Each theme is linked to an important Principle:
A Unique Child
Every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
Child Development
The explanation of this commitment includes information about how babies and children communicate and the need to engage in 'conversations' with babies. Babies and children are competent learners and development is a complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors.
Every child is a unique individual with their own characteristics and temperament.
Development is a continuous, complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors in which the body, brain and behaviour become more complex.
Babies and children mature at different rates and at different times in their lives.
Babies and children are vulnerable and become resilient and confident if they have support from others.
Early relationships strongly influence how children develop and having close relationships with carers is very important.
- A Skilful Communicator
- A Competent learner
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practices
- Inclusive Practice
The explanation of this commitment includes information about children's entitlements - their right be treated fairly regardless of race, religion or abilities. There is information about involving parents in early support and knowing when and how to call for specialist help.
Children's Entitlements
All children are citizens and have rights and entitlements. Children should be treated fairly regardless of race, religion or abilities. This applies no matter:
- what they think or say
- what type of family they come from
- what language(s) they speak
- what their parents do
- whether they are girls or boys
- whether they have a disability or whether they are rich or poor
All children have an equal right to be listened to and valued in the setting.
- Equality and Diversity
- Early Support
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Keeping Safe
The explanation of this commitment includes information about keeping babies and children safe and protected - babies and children are vulnerable as they have little sense of danger. Practitioners can help children discover boundaries and learn to make choices
Being Safe and Protected
Babies and children are vulnerable as they have little sense of danger and only learn to assess risks with help from adults.
Reading stories and poems about everyday events is a good way of helping children to focus on who they can trust and how to keep safe.
However, being overprotected can prevent children from learning about possible dangers and about how to protect themselves from harm.
Learning when to say 'No' and anticipating when others will do so is part of learning to keep safe.
- Discovering Boundaries
- Making Choices
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Health and Well-Being
The explanation of this commitment includes information about the growth and development of babies and children. Practitioners need to nurture physical and emotional well-being through a variety of ways involving parents, carers and the children themselves.
Growing and Developing
Although newborn babies vary in size their growth rates are very similar.
Children's health and well-being are affected by both the genes they inherit and the environment in which they live.
Development is very rapid in the first three years.
Children really do thrive when their physical and emotional needs are met.
- Physical Well-Being
- Emotional Well-Being
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Positive Relationships
Children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person.
Respecting Each Other
The explanation of this commitment includes understanding and recognising feelings, supporting children in developing friendships, setting an example through open and friendly professional relationships and developing a friendly relationship with parents.
Understanding feelings
At times we all experience strong emotions as we deal with difficult or stressful events.
Adults and children experience a wide range of feelings. Children gradually learn to understand and manage their feelings with support from the adults around them.
Recognising their own feelings helps everyone to understand other people's feelings and to become more caring towards others.
When each person is valued for who they are and differences are appreciated, everyone feels included and understood, whatever their personality, abilities, ethnic background or culture.
- Friendships
- Professional Relationships
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Parents as Partners
The explanation of this commitment includes respecting diversity by valuing all families, good and welcoming communication by approachable staff, learning together with parents, reflecting children's home language in the setting, involving fathers and male carers, and reflecting on practice in relation to parents and carers.
Respecting Diversity
All families are important and should be welcomed and valued in all settings.
Families are all different. Children may live with one or both parents, with other relatives or carers, with same sex parents or in an extended family.
Families may speak more than one language at home; they may be travellers, refugees or asylum seekers.
All practitioners will benefit from professional development in diversity, equality and anti-discriminatory practice whatever the ethnic, cultural or social make-up of the setting.
- Communication
- Learning Together
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Supporting Learning
The explanation of this commitment includes promoting positive interactions with all children and families, listening to children at all ages or using other ways of communicating, systematically helping children to learn, and motivating children to concentrate.
Positive Interactions
Effective practitioners work in the following ways:
- they build respectful and caring relationships with all children and families while focusing on learning and achievement
- they observe children sensitively and respond appropriately to encourage and extend curiosity and learning
- by observing and listening they discover what children like to do, and when they feel confident, scared or frustrated
- they are able to tune in to, rather than talk at, children, taking their lead and direction from what the children say or do.
- Listening to Children
- Effective Teaching
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Key Person
The explanation of this commitment includes sections on secure attachment, shared care and independence. The emphasis is on developing the role of a 'Key person' to form a genuine bond with a baby or child and form friendly, supportive relationships with the family.
Secure Attachment
A key person helps the baby or child to become familiar with the setting and to feel confident and safe within it.
A key person develops a genuine bond with children and offers a settled, close relationship.
When children feel happy and secure in this way they are confident to explore and to try out new things.
Even when children are older and can hold special people in mind for longer there is still a need for them to have a key person to depend on in the setting, such as their teacher or a teaching assistant.
- Shared Care
- Independence
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Enabling Environments
The environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children's development and learning.
Observation, Assessment and Planning
The explanation of this commitment includes planning starting with the child through observation and using observation to form evaluations and assessments. The summative assessment is the EYFS profile made for each child at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
Starting with the Child
Observe children to find out about their needs, what they are interested in and what they can do.
Note children's responses in different situations.
Analyse your observations and highlight children's achievements or their need for further support.
Involve parents as part of the ongoing observation and assessment process.
- Planning
- Assessment
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Supporting Every Child
The explanation of this commitment includes children's need for sensitive knowledgeable adults, understanding their personal learning journeys and working together with other professionals and parents making children's needs central to the learning process.
Children's Needs
Children need sensitive, knowledgeable adults who know when and how to engage their interests and how to offer support at different times.
Children benefit from a range of experiences, including those that are predictable, comforting and challenging.
When children's physical and emotional needs are met they are more ready to take advantage of the play and learning opportunities on offer.
- The Learning Journey
- Working Together
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- The Learning Environment
The explanation of this commitment includes the indoor and outdoor learning environments and the emotional learning environment.
The Emotional Environment
The emotional environment is created by all the people in the setting, but adults have to ensure that it is warm and accepting of everyone.
Adults need to empathise with children and support their emotions.
When children feel confident in the environment they are willing to try things out, knowing that effort is valued.
When children know that their feelings are accepted they learn to express them, confident that adults will help them with how they are feeling.
- The Outdoor Environment
- The Indoor Environment
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- The Wider Context
The commitment includes transitions and continuity, community contacts, and multi-agency working (e.g. home visitors, outreach workers, health or social care professionals, ethnic minority achievement service staff, librarians and local artists).
Transitions and Continuity
Children may move between several different settings in the course of a day, a week, a month or a year.
Children's social, emotional and educational needs are central to any transition between one setting and another or within one setting.
Some children and their parents will find transition times stressful while others will enjoy the experience.
Effective communication between settings is key to ensuring that children's needs are met and there is continuity in their learning.
- Multi-Agency Working
- The Community
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Learning and Development
Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates and all areas of Learning and Development are equally important and inter-connected.
Play and Exploration
The explanation of this commitment includes learning through experience, adult involvement and plenty of space and time to play outdoors and indoors. Practitioners need to ensure effective practice and reflection, overcoming time constraints and balancing creative learning with planning for the group.
Learning Through Experience
Children have to experience play physically and emotionally.
Children may play alone or with others.
In their play children use the experiences they have and extend them to build up ideas, concepts and skills.
While playing children can express fears and re-live anxious experiences. They can try things out, solve problems and be creative and can take risks and use trial and error to find things out.
- Adult Involvement
- Contexts for Learning
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Active Learning
The explanation of this commitment includes description of how active learners need mental and physical involvement, and social and emotional engagement.
Mental and Physical Involvement
To be mentally or physically engaged in learning, children need to feel at ease, secure and confident.
Active learning occurs when children are keen to learn and are interested in finding things out for themselves.
When children are actively involved in learning they gain a sense of satisfaction from their explorations and investigations.
When children engage with people, materials, objects, ideas or events they test things out and solve problems. They need adults to challenge and extend their thinking.
- Decision Making
- Personalised Learning
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
- Creativity and Critical Thinking
The explanation of this commitment includes description of learning through making connections, transforming understanding and sustaining shared thinking.
Making Connections
Being creative involves the whole curriculum, not just the arts. It is not necessarily about making an end-product such as a picture, song or play.
Children will more easily make connections between things they've learned if the environment encourages them to do so. For example, they need to be able to fetch materials easily and to be able to move them from one place to another.
Effective practitioners value each child's culture and help them to make connections between experiences at home, the setting and the wider community.
It is difficult for children to make creative connections in learning when colouring in a worksheet or making a Diwali card just like everyone else's.
- Transforming Understanding
- Sustained Shared Thinking
- Effective Practice
- Challenges and Dilemmas
- Reflecting on Practice
Areas of Learning and Development
'Areas of Learning and Development' is one of the commitments to the EYFS principle of 'Learning and Development'. The commitment includes the practice guidance for all six areas of Learning and Development.
The six areas of Learning and Development together make up the skills, knowledge and experiences appropriate for babies and children as they grow, learn and develop.
Although these are presented as separate areas, it is important to remember that for children everything links and nothing is compartmentalised.
The challenge for practitioners is to ensure that children's learning and development occur as an outcome of their individual interests and abilities and that planning for learning and development takes account of these.
The areas of learning and development are:
- Communication, Language and Literacy
- Knowledge and Understanding of the World
- Physical Development
- Creative Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Requirements
Children must be provided with experiences and support which will help them to develop a positive sense of themselves and of others; respect for others; social skills; and a positive disposition to learn. Providers must ensure support for children's emotional well-being to help them to know themselves and what they can do.
Aspects of Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Personal, social and emotional development is made up of the following aspects:
dispositions and attitudes - is about how children become interested, excited and motivated about their learning
self-confidence and self-esteem - is about children having a sense of their own value and understanding the need for sensitivity to significant events in their own and other people's lives
making relationships - is about the importance of children forming good relationships with others and working alongside others companionably
behaviour and self-control - is about how children develop a growing understanding of what is right and wrong and why, together with learning about the impact of their words and actions on themselves and others
self-care - is about how children gain a sense of self-respect and concern for their own personal hygiene and care and how they develop independence
sense of community - is about how children understand and respect their own needs, views, cultures and beliefs and those of other people.
What Personal, Social and Emotional Development means for children
For children, being special to someone and well cared-for is vital for their physical, social and emotional health and well-being.
Being acknowledged and affirmed by important people in their lives leads to children gaining confidence and inner strength through secure attachments with these people.
Exploration within close relationships leads to the growth of self-assurance, promoting a sense of belonging which allows children to explore the world from a secure base.
Children need adults to set a good example and to give them opportunities for interaction with others so that they can develop positive ideas about themselves and others.
Children who are encouraged to feel free to express their ideas and their feelings, such as joy, sadness, frustration and fear, can develop strategies to cope with new, challenging or stressful situations.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Requirements
Children's learning and competence in communicating, speaking and listening, being read to and beginning to read and write must be supported and extended. They must be provided with opportunity and encouragement to use their skills in a range of situations and for a range of purposes, and be supported in developing the confidence and disposition to do so.
Aspects of Communication, Language and Literacy
Communication, language and literacy is made up of the following aspects:
language for communication - is about how children become communicators. Learning to listen and speak emerges out of non-verbal communication, which includes facial expression, eye contact and hand gesture. These skills develop as children interact with others, listen to and use language, extend their vocabulary and experience stories, songs, poems and rhymes.
language for thinking - is about how children learn to use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences and how they use talk to clarify their thinking and ideas or to refer to events they have observed or are curious about. linking sounds and letters - is about how children develop the ability to distinguish between sounds and become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. They develop understanding of the correspondence between spoken and written sounds and learn to link sounds and letters and use their knowledge to read and write simple words by sounding out and blending.
reading - is about children understanding and enjoying stories, books and rhymes, recognising that print carries meaning, both fiction and fact, and reading a range of familiar words and simple sentences.
writing - is about how children build an understanding of the relationship between the spoken and written word and how through making marks, drawing and personal writing children ascribe meaning to text and attempt to write for various purposes.
handwriting - is about the ways in which children's random marks, lines and drawings develop and form the basis of recognisable letters.
What Communication, Language and Literacy means for children
To become skilful communicators, babies and young children need to be with people with whom they have warm and loving relationships, such as their family or carers and, in a group situation, a key person whom they know and trust.
Babies respond differently to different sounds and from an early age are able to distinguish sound patterns. They use their voices to make contact and to let people know what they need and how they feel. They learn to talk by being talked to.
All children learn best through activities and experiences that engage all the senses. Music, dance, rhymes and songs support language development.
As children develop speaking and listening skills they build the foundations for literacy, for making sense of visual and verbal signs and ultimately for reading and writing. Children need varied opportunities to interact with others and to use a wide variety of resources for expressing their understanding, including mark-making, drawing, modelling, reading and writing.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Requirements
Children must be supported in developing their understanding of problem solving, reasoning and numeracy in a broad range of contexts in which they can explore, enjoy, learn, practise and talk about their developing understanding. They must be provided with opportunities to practise and extend their skills in these areas and to gain confidence and competence in their use.
Aspects of Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy is made up of the following aspects:
Numbers as labels and for counting - is about how children gradually know and use numbers and counting in play, and eventually recognise and use numbers reliably, to develop mathematical ideas and to solve problems.
Calculating - is about how children develop an awareness of the relationship between numbers and amounts and know that numbers can be combined to be 'added together' and can be separated by 'taking away' and that two or more amounts can be compared.
Shape, space and measures - is about how through talking about shapes and quantities, and developing appropriate vocabulary, children use their knowledge to develop ideas and to solve mathematical problems.
What Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy means for children
Babies' and children's mathematical development occurs as they seek patterns, make connections and recognise relationships through finding out about and working with numbers and counting, with sorting and matching and with shape, space and measures.
Children use their knowledge and skills in these areas to solve problems, generate new questions and make connections across other areas of Learning and development.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Requirements
Children must be supported in developing the knowledge, skills and understanding that help them to make sense of the world. Their learning must be supported through offering opportunities for them to use a range of tools safely; encounter creatures, people, plants and objects in their natural environments and in real-life situations; undertake practical 'experiments'; and work with a range of materials.
Aspects of Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Knowledge and understanding of the world is made up of the following aspects:
Exploration and investigation - is about how children investigate objects and materials and their properties, learn about change and patterns, similarities and differences, and question how and why things work.
Designing and making - is about the ways in which children learn about the construction process and the tools and techniques that can be used to assemble materials creatively and safely.
ICT - is about how children find out about and learn how to use appropriate information technology such as computers and programmable toys that support their learning.
Time - is about how children find out about past and present events relevant to their own lives or those of their families.
Place - is about how children become aware of and interested in the natural world, and find out about their local area, knowing what they like and dislike about it.
Communities - is about how children begin to know about their own and other people's cultures in order to understand and celebrate the similarities and differences between them in a diverse society.
What Knowledge and Understanding of the World means for children
Babies and children find out about the world through exploration and from a variety of sources, including their families and friends, the media, and through what they see and hear.
Babies and children need regular opportunities to learn about different ways of life, to be given accurate information and to develop positive and caring attitudes towards others.
Children should be helped to learn to respect and value all people and learn to avoid misapprehensions and negative attitudes towards others when they develop their knowledge and understanding of the world.
Children should be involved in the practical application of their knowledge and skills which will promote self-esteem through allowing them to make decisions about what to investigate and how to do it.
Physical Development
Requirements
The physical development of babies and young children must be encouraged through the provision of opportunities for them to be active and interactive and to improve their skills of coordination, control, manipulation and movement. They must be supported in using all of their senses to learn about the world around them and to make connections between new information and what they already know. They must be supported in developing an understanding of the importance of physical activity and making healthy choices in relation to food.
Aspects of Physical Development
Physical development is made up of the following aspects:
Movement and space - is about how children learn to move with confidence, imagination and safety, with an awareness of space, themselves and others.
Health and bodily awareness - is about how children learn the importance of keeping healthy and the factors that contribute to maintaining their health.
Using equipment and materials - is about the ways in which children use a range of small and large equipment.
What Physical Development means for children
Babies and children learn by being active and physical development takes place across all areas of Learning and development.
Helps children gain confidence in what they can do.
Enables children to feel the positive benefits of being healthy and active.
Helps children to develop a positive sense of well-being.
Good health in the early years helps to safeguard health and well-being throughout life. It is important that children develop healthy habits when they first learn about food and activity. Growing with appropriate weight gain in the first years of life helps to guard against obesity in later life.
Creative Development
Requirements
Children's creativity must be extended by the provision of support for their curiosity, exploration and play. They must be provided with opportunities to explore and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings, for example, through a variety of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role-play activities, mathematics, and design and technology.
Aspects of Creative Development
Creative development is made up of the following aspects:
Being creative - responding to experiences, expressing and communicating ideas - is about how children respond in a variety of ways to what they see, hear, smell, touch or feel and how, as a result of these encounters, they express and communicate their own ideas, thoughts and feelings.
Exploring media and materials - is about children's independent and guided exploration of and engagement with a widening range of media and materials, finding out about, thinking about and working with colour, texture, shape, space and form in two and three dimensions.
Creating music and dance - is about children's independent and guided explorations of sound, movement and music. Focusing on how sounds can be made and changed and how sounds can be recognised and repeated from a pattern, it includes ways of exploring movement, matching movements to music and singing simple songs from memory.
Developing imagination and imaginative play - is about how children are supported to develop and build their imaginations through stories, role-plays, imaginative play, dance, music, design, and art.
What Creative Development means for children
Creativity is about taking risks and making connections and is strongly linked to play.
Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transforming things using media and materials such as crayons, paints, scissors, words, sounds, movement, props and make-believe.
Creativity involves children in initiating their own learning and making choices and decisions.
Children's responses to what they see, hear and experience through their senses are individual and the way they represent their experiences is unique and valuable.
Being creative enables babies and children to explore many processes, media and materials and to make new things emerge as a result.