Children learn when they are in a safe and caring environment where they are stimulated through play.
Babies and young children develop best when they are in a caring relationship with an adult. A baby will learn to walk faster when they have a safe pair of arms to walk towards and learn to talk, when they have an adult listening and responding to them. At Little Treasure Day Nursery, all the games, activities and themes that we work with your child are for their development. Your child is assigned a key person who carries out the main settling in, planning and care routines.
Here is how we support and extend children’s learning in the early years:
1. Communication & Language
This involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
2. Physical Development
Involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive and to develop their coordination, control and movement. Children will also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
3. Personal, Social & Emotional Development
Involves helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.
4. Literacy
Involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
5. Mathematics
Involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems and to describe shapes, spaces and measures.
6. Understanding the World
Involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
7. Expressive Arts and Design
Involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play and design & technology.
We are registered with Ofsted, our reference number is 2614218.
Four EYFS guiding principles that shape Early learning practice at Little Treasure Day Nursery:
A Unique Child
Recognises that every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured. The commitments are focused around development; inclusion; safety; and health and well-being.
Positive Relationships
Children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person. The commitments are focused around respect; partnership with parents; supporting learning; and the role of the key person.
Enabling Environments
The environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning. The commitments are focused around observations, assessment and planning; support for every child; the learning environment; and the wider context – transitions, continuity, and multi-agency working.
Learning and Development
Recognises that children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates, and that all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.
This approach ensures that the EYFS meets the overarching aim of improving outcomes and reflects that it is every child’s right to grow up safe; healthy; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; and with economic well-being.
Parents
What can parents and carers do?
Parents and carers are children’s first teachers. When they are with you learning can happen at any time and anywhere. For example, through:
- Being generous with praise and cuddles
- Reading things together
- Playing games, singing nursery rhymes
- Talking about what you can see in the park or on the street
- Counting the stairs as you go up or down
- Why are the years from birth to five so special?
The years from birth to five see the greatest growth and learning for all children and the main aims are for the child to have good health, be happy, feel safe and to be successful.
Early learning is the key to your child’s future and families make the greatest difference at this stage.
These activities will include but are not limited to:
Dressing up clothes.
Books.
Small world toys.
Construction toys (lego, duplo etc).
Pretend play (toy kitchen etc).
Water play.
Sand Play.
Arts and Crafts.
Messy Play and sensory play.
Outings.
Cooking.
Gardening.
Outdoor play and equipment.
We will regularly observe your child and make records, these will enable us to make plans on how we can help your child move onto the next stage of their development.
If there is a particular activity that you would like nursery staff to do with your child, please let their key person know. We are very happy to support activities that you are doing at home or events that have happened. For example if you have been to a wedding we can continue this theme by providing the children with material to use as wedding clothes and help them understand through books and other resources.
You can connect to the Baby's Days system and see a detailed journey of your child's learning and development, this can be found within the Progress section on the system, this section details all the observations, next steps, achievement dates and photographs of your child's development.