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Our staff meet regularly to plan an interesting range of activities based on the ‘Birth To Three Matters’ framework. This allows us to ensure that our younger babies and toddlers develop their learning through their own interests and provides opportunities for them to explore and investigate with the use of their senses so that they become strong and confident learners. Observations are made on the children during their' play' and activities, which are used to monitor children's’ progress and see what they are interested in, this knowledge is used to help us to plan further opportunities for learning based on the lines of development that the children are following. We also provide the children with regular opportunities to engage in Heuristic Play sessions. During a heuristic play session, adults supervise play but there is very little adult intervention, instead, adults will make observations on what the children are doing. It is often believed that children of a very young age do not engage socially with their peers. Through heuristic play we have found that children DO interact socially with their peers, just not in the way we adults do. Instead they speak through eye contact, simple sounds, single words and body language. Through heuristic play, a very young child will learn turn taking, sharing and discovering with friends his or her own age and at their own pace. During an heuristic play session, commercially bought toys are never offered to children. Rather a range of every day objects are used to enable children to do what they enjoy most - filling and emptying, slotting, selecting and discarding, recognising differences and similarities, building and balancing. Material is abundant and so conflicts between children are rare. Materials include large containers of all shapes and sizes such as biscuit tins, cans, plastics bottles, egg boxes, cardboard and wooden boxes; objects which roll such as balls, pompoms, tubes, reels and rollers; assorted objects such as bundles of chain, jar lids, pine cones, shells, ribbons, pieces of fabric, keys, bracelets, curtain rings and kitchen roll rods.Our three to five year olds are offered a high quality curriculum based on the Early Learning Goals of the Foundation Stage. Our ethos is firmly founded in allowing children to learn through their own initiated play through the resources provided, balanced with adult led planned activities to ensure that they are given opportunities to develop the important skills necessary for a strong foundation, which can be built upon when they enter mainstream school. |