Our Curriculum

Our curriculum is designed around children’s interests, needs and stages of development. Children are provided with meaningful opportunities to make choices in their play and learning, while practitioners carefully facilitate experiences and create an enabling environment that promotes curiosity, engagement and sustained learning. Through ongoing observation, we consider how children access and adapt activities in response to their individual interests, and we use this knowledge to support purposeful exploration and independent thinking. Practitioners sensitively extend children’s play by introducing new ideas and resources at appropriate moments, broadening their experiences and deepening learning. Children are encouraged to explore, persevere and learn from challenge, with appropriate support in place to help them develop confidence and resilience. Open-ended resources, including natural materials, are available to promote creativity and exploration, and our provision remains responsive to children’s individual strengths, needs and next steps.

Our long-term annual planning provides a clear and ambitious framework for the curriculum. This is underpinned by six broad, high-level statements that have been carefully identified to reflect what we want children to know, do and achieve during their time in our setting. The curriculum is appropriately adapted for children aged 9 months to 2 years, 2 to 3 years, and 3 to 4 years. Each term is supported by a new topic, alongside carefully chosen core books, to strengthen children’s learning and ensure that teaching remains focused on our curriculum intentions.

Our curriculum includes carefully planned adult-led experiences and topics, including events and celebrations, which broaden children’s understanding of the wider world and promote respect for similarities and differences between people, families, communities and cultures. Through these experiences, children begin to develop a secure sense of belonging, an awareness of diversity and an age-appropriate understanding of British values. Our curriculum is ambitious and inclusive for all children. It is designed to ensure that every child, including those who are disadvantaged, children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those known to social care, can access rich learning opportunities and develop the knowledge, skills and cultural capital they need for future learning. Practitioners have a secure understanding of each child’s stage of development, interests and next steps. This enables us to adapt provision; scaffold learning effectively and provide appropriate challenge so that children make good progress from their individual starting points. We encourage children to become confident, resilient and increasingly independent learners who are willing to have a go, persevere and take pride in their achievements.

Our curriculum is carefully designed to guide children through key transitions, from the Cub Room to the Preschool Room and subsequently into Primary School. We prioritise the Prime areas of development within the Cub Room:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

• Communication and Language

• Physical Development

In the Preschool Room, we address both Prime and Specific areas of learning, which include:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

• Communication and Language

• Physical Development

• Literacy

• Mathematics

• Understanding the World

• Expressive Arts and Design