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Pre- school Room
Children start to learn about the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by Wendy House day Nursery helps children to do this by providing all of the children with interesting activities that are right for their age and stage of development.
For children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, the nursery provides a curriculum for the foundation stage of education. This curriculum is set out in a document, published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Department for Education and Skills, and called Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage. Our nursery follows this guidance.
The guidance divides children’s learning and development into six areas:
 | Personal, social and emotional development; |
| Communication, language and literacy development; |
| Mathematical development; |
| Knowledge and understanding of the world; |
| Physical development; and |
| Creative development. |
For each area, the guidance sets out early learning goals. These goals state what it is expected that children will know and be able to do by the end of the reception year of their education.
For each early learning goal, the guidance sets out stepping stones, which describe the stages through which children are likely to pass as they move to achievement of the goal. Wendy House Day Nursery uses the early learning goals and their stepping stones to help us to trace each child’s progress and to enable us to provide the right activities to help all of the children move towards achievement of the early learning goals.
Personal, social and emotional development
This area of children’s development covers:
| Being able to use conversation with one other person, in small groups and in large groups to talk with and listen to others; |
| Adding to their vocabulary by learning the meaning of – and being able to use – new words; |
| Being able to use new words to describe their experiences; |
| Getting to know the sounds and letters which make up the words we use; |
| Listening to – and talking about – stories; |
| Knowing how to handle books and that they can be a source of stories and information; |
| Knowing the purposes for which we use writing; and |
| Making their personal attempts at writing. |
Mathematical development
This area of children’s development covers:
| Building up ideas of how many, how much, how far and how big; |
| Building up ideas about patterns, the shape of objects and parts of objects, and the amount of space taken up by objects; |
| Starting to understand that numbers help us to answer questions about how many, how much, how far and how big; |
| Building up ideas about how to use counting to find out how many; and |
| Being introduced to finding the result of adding more and taking away from the amount we already have. |
Knowledge and understanding of the world
This area of children’s development covers:
| Finding out about the natural world and how it works; |
| Finding out about the made world and how it works; |
| Learning how to choose – and use – the right tool for the task; |
| Learning about computers, the internet and how to use them and what they can help us do; |
| Starting to put together ideas about past and present and the links between them; |
| Beginning to learn about their locality and its special features; and |
| Learning about their own and other cultures. |
Physical development
This area of children’s development covers:
| Gaining control over the large movements which we can make our arms, legs and bodies, so that they can run, jump, hop, skip, roll, climb, balance and lift; |
| Gaining control over the small movements we can make with our arms, wrists and hands, so that they can pick up and use objects, tools and materials; and |
| Learning about the importance of – and how to look after – their bodies. |
Creative development
This area if the children’s development covers:
| Using paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role play to express their ideas and feelings; and |
| Becoming interested in the way that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role playing can be used to express ideas and feelings. |
Play helps young children to learn and develop through doing and talking, which research has shown to be the means by which young children think. Our nursery uses the early learning goals and their stepping stones to plan and provide a range of play activities which help children to make progress in each of the areas of learning and development. In some of these activities children decide how they will use the activity and, in others, an adult takes the lead in helping the children to take part in the activity. In all activities information from the early learning goals and stepping stones has been used to decide what equipment to provide and how to provide it.
