Our Curriculum

Curriculum Areas of learning

Tiddlywinks Nursery School implements the Early Years Foundation Stage – (EYFS) across our settings. The Early year’s foundation stage is designed to ensure children from birth to five years old learn through play, the EYFS is a structure of learning, development and care.

The EYFS sets out seven areas of learning and development for children, three prime areas, which are:

  • Communication and language
  • Personal, social and emotional development
  • Physical development

The four specific areas, which are :

  • Literacy
  • Understanding of the world
  • Mathematics
  • Expressive art and design

Letters & Sounds & Phonics

As an early year’s provider we implement the EYFS  curriculum in daily, a main focus we base our teaching and learning is ‘Letters & Sounds’ which is a systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics.

Teaching Phonics to our pre-school children:

Recap existing sounds

 

  1. Quick re-cap of existing sounds.
  2. Introduce a new sound of the day.
  3. Picture to match sound i.e., ow – cow (from Twinkle)
  4. Introduce a new tricky word.
  5. Three words with the sound you are learning, your turn my turn to allow children to hear sounds in the words.

 

If you are interested in any support and information regarding ‘Letters and sounds’ and ‘Phonics’ can be discussed with the nursery setting directly.

‘Welcomm Programme ‘

We are also trained and have invested heavily into another alternative tool kit  supporting our children’s development by reacting to speech & language delays, the ‘Welcomm Programme ‘ which is a complete speech and language toolkit from screening to interventions. It is suggested that delayed  language skills can lead to under-performance later in life, yet many nursery setting and primary schools have unidentified speech & language difficulties, this Welcomm Programme investment applied with our  underpinning knowledge and training can help turn this around. The toolkit comes with an age-appropriate Big Book of Ideas providing a total of over 150 instant play-based activities so you can take appropriate action straight away. Activities can be used with parents at home too, so that support is provided whether or not a child is referred to a speech and language therapist. For more information, please read the wide-ranging enclosure attached.

‘The curiosity approach’ 

Tiddlywinks Nursery School are inspired by ‘The curiosity approach’ 

Co-founders Lyndsay Hellyn & Stephanie Bennett whom likewise, find that childhood appears to be getting shorter, academic forcefully coming in, changing times with technology that play seems to be less important but, we agree that the curiosity approach is creative, based around play and less dependent or addicive to T.V. Ipads, technology in general. Early years is an age, stage and time all on its own.

One creator & influencer Magda Gerber (November1,1910 – April 27, 2007) - an early childhood educator in the United States and is known for teaching parents and caregivers how to understand babies and interact with them respectfully from birth. The seeds for her passion for infant care come from paediatrician Emmi Pikler who influences the curiosity approach.

Based on all the above, our curriculum has a mixture but we endeavour to replicate a child’s home, with routines, rhythms, formalities with all the home comforts. Most of our play resources and equipment is community play with its natural, environmental considerations and safety are of highest standards with great outdoor facilities allowing both outdoors indoors and indoors outdoors without decay or weathering supporting  children’s learning mostly being taught through games and play.  

We focus on Early language, more broad rich activities reducing the amount of time we spend on unnecessary paper work  whilst assessing progress and what comes next.

The principles underpin the EYFS allowing teachers to plan specific knowledge and skill having open ended play opportunities so children can explore and represent their ideas through play.

Assessment is a tool to support children development but take place proportionally to have best impact of development and is not intended to be a series of trackers, charts or tick list as Ofsted/ government previous framework that was proved to be burdensome to produce that does not directly support children’s development.

Children learn best with high quality interactions with adults therefore not to be burdened in unnecessary administrative tasks instead, empower children to be creative, resilient,  confident and kind.