Planning and the Curriculum
Our aim is to encourage each child to develop their full potential by gaining in confidence and independence in a caring and stimulating environment. The school values Aspiration, Success, Pride, Integrity, Resilience Equality is embedded throughout our EYFS Unit. Through our child led curriculum, we provide an environment that allows each child to display high levels of concentration, creativity, energy and persistence. The rationale behind this that high-levels of well-being and involvement lead to high levels of child development and indicate deep level learning. This curriculum concept should result in significant changes to the child’s learning capacity, leading to better outcomes in relationships and life in general.
The Early Years Framework (2023) states that practitioners must consider the individual needs, interests, and stage of development of each child in their care, and must use this information to plan a challenging and enjoyable experience for each child in all of the areas of learning and development. A combination of Adult Led sessions and Planning in the moment fully allows this to happen and encourages the children to pursue their own interests. Planning in the moment means that the learning environment, both the indoor environment and outdoor environment, constantly needs to be reviewed and adapted to ensure there remains challenge and variety. We believe that children need a rich opportunity to initiate ideas and activities so that they develop the learning characteristics that will support lifelong learning.
Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. In partnership with parents and carers, we enable the children to begin the process of becoming active learners for life.
We understand and appreciate the importance of the outdoor environment for our children. It is a continuation of our indoor provision, and it will be used at every opportunity. At Millbrook Combined School and Nursery, we provide our children with opportunities to develop all seven areas of the curriculum through both our indoor and outdoor provision. We want the children to feel safe and secure at all times and ensure that our safeguarding procedures are rigorous and kept up to date. Communication is important to us, and we greatly value the relationship that we develop with parents throughout this vital year.
Staff use the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework as a tool to measure the development stages of each child.
The Early Years Foundation Stage covers the three prime areas and four specific areas of learning:
Core Learning Experiences
Most core experiences are offered every day, with a few offered less frequently to support vocabulary and learning with a specific topic or skill. Each core experience promotes learning across all seven areas in the Early Years Foundation Stage. This enables children to learn through repeated experiences which can be differentiated to match and extend their development, all the way from the earliest stages of the EYFS to the Early Learning Goals.
We believe that young children thrive best through play and first-hand experiences, with the companionship of other children and in an emotionally warm, secure and orderly environment. They thrive with interested, warm and supportive adults who have a sophisticated understanding of how children develop and learn, who can share in new discoveries, sympathise with setbacks and upsets, and prepare the nursery inside and outside for the children’s interests and needs.
The core experiences summarise how the provision of high-quality play and first-hand experiences can enable children to learn indoors and outside through social interaction, through play including heuristic play and treasure basket play, communication in its widest sense and the development of language, and movement and multi-sensory experiences which develop health, strength, coordination and thinking.
The richest play and discovery takes place when it's supported by adults who are ready to judge when to join in, and when not to, and when to teach a new skill or introduce a new concept. We think this is done best when children can revisit high quality play opportunities every day, week, month and year, refining their skills and developing their thinking and understanding.
For more information about our themes, key and linked texts and core vocabulary, please visit our 'Year Group Learning' pages.
To find out more information about our carefully sequenced curriculum please speak to the school office.
Enrichment Experiences - 'Millbrook Memories'
Part of our Foundation Stage offer at Millbrook Combined School and Nursery, is to provide children, with additional opportunities that enrich their lives and widen their experiences. The enrichment experiences are in addition to all the exciting learning opportunities they have access to throughout the year as part of our curriculum offer.
Our Promise to Parents
For more information about the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Please follow the link below:
We have very high expectations regarding the behaviour of our children whilst understanding that young children are learning how to socialise with others. It is important that you work with us as we help children to develop a sense of self respect and of respect for each other. We also encourage children to respect their environment and use a variety of strategies such as positive reinforcement for good behaviour, to support this development. Information about how we manage children’s behaviour can be found in our behaviour policy.