Every term the management team and your child’s key person will meet and discuss your child’s progress and development. We will highlight how they are getting on since the last discussion, their achievements, any areas they may need support and any interests they have that we can really key into for the following term. All this information will be shared with you. You will also be given the opportunity meet with your child’s key person in regular parent/carer consultations.

At our setting we use an interactive software app called TAPESTRY. This is available for all parents/carers to access on their phone, tablet or computer. This allows our parents and carers a chance to access their child’s individual journal to keep up with their development and their day-to-day interactions within the setting.

As parents/carers you can download the TAPESTRY app and with the unique login provided to you after your registration, you can access all the daily activities and Learning Journey progress of your child. TAPESTRY provide a secure platform for you to communicate with the Nursery staff whenever you need to.

As a setting we have a high commitment to ensure our practice is effective and allows all of our children to have the best possible start to their education. Below we have outlined the 7 key areas of effective practice, to explain what we have in place to ensure we provide the best curriculum for all our Little Stars.

 • All children deserve to have an equal chance of success.

 • High-quality early education is good for all children. It is especially important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

 • When they start school, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are, on average, 4 months1 behind their peers. We need to do more to narrow that gap. 

• Children who have lived through difficult experiences can begin to grow stronger when they experience high quality early education and care. 

• High-quality early education and care is inclusive. Children’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are identified quickly. All children promptly receive any extra help they need, so they can progress well in their learning.

• The child’s experience must always be central to the thinking of every practitioner. 

• Babies, toddlers and young children thrive when they are loved and well cared for.

 • High-quality care is consistent. Every practitioner needs to enjoy spending time with young children.

 • Effective practitioners are responsive to children and babies. They notice when a baby looks towards them and gurgles and respond with pleasure. 

• Practitioners understand that toddlers are learning to be independent, so they will sometimes get frustrated. 

• Practitioners know that starting school, and all the other transitions in the early years, are big steps for small children.

• The curriculum is a top-level plan of everything the early years setting wants the children to learn. 

• Planning to help every child to develop their language is vital. 

• The curriculum needs to be ambitious. Careful sequencing will help children to build their learning over time. 

• Young children’s learning is often driven by their interests. Plans need to be flexible.

 • Babies and young children do not develop in a fixed way. Their development is like a spider’s web with many strands, not a straight line. 

• Depth in early learning is much more important than covering lots of things in a superficial way.

 • Children are powerful learners. Every child can make progress in their learning, with the right help. 

• Effective pedagogy is a mix of different approaches. Children learn through play, by adults modelling, by observing each other, and through guided learning and direct teaching. 

• Practitioners carefully organise enabling environments for high-quality play. Sometimes, they make time and space available for children to invent their own play. Sometimes, they join in to sensitively support and extend children’s learning. 

• Children in the early years also learn through group work, when practitioners guide their learning. 

• Older children need more of this guided learning. 

• A well-planned learning environment, indoors and outside, is an important aspect of pedagogy.

• Assessment is about noticing what children can do and what they know. It is not about lots of data and evidence. 

• Effective assessment requires practitioners to understand child development. Practitioners also need to be clear about what they want children to know and be able to do. 

• Accurate assessment can highlight whether a child has a special educational need and needs extra help. 

• Before assessing children, it’s a good idea to think about whether the assessments will be useful. 

• Assessment should not take practitioners away from the children for long periods of time.

• Executive function includes the child’s ability to: 

– hold information in mind

 – focus their attention 

– think flexibly

 – inhibit impulsive behaviour.

 – concentrate their thinking

 – plan what to do next 

– monitor what they are doing and adapt

 – regulate strong feelings 

– be patient for what they want

 – bounce back when things get difficult.

• Language development is central to self-regulation: children use language to guide their actions and plans. Pretend play gives many opportunities for children to focus their thinking, persist and plan ahead.

• It is important for parents and early years settings to have a strong and respectful partnership. This sets the scene for children to thrive in the early years.

 • This includes listening regularly to parents and giving parents clear information about their children’s progress.

 • The help that parents give their children at home has a very significant impact on their learning. 

• Some children get much less support for their learning at home than others. By knowing and understanding all the children and their families, settings can offer extra help to those who need it most.

 • It is important to encourage all parents to chat, play and read with their children.

The Early Years Foundation Stage focuses on how your child learns and what adults can do to encourage that learning. It identifies three prime areas, which are considered to be fundamental through the EYFS, and four specific areas which include essential skills and knowledge and provide important contexts for learning.

The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children’s language effectively.

Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts. This will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, storytelling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures.

Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others.

Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.

Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults.

By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence

 It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).

Offering daily opportunities to share and read books and sing songs and rhymes that reflect a range of cultures. We also offer a wide range of stimulating equipment that encourages children's mark making skills. Examples of what we offer are, creating marks with our fingers in wet sand, making marks with sticks in mud, using large brushes with paint or water or using resources such as pencils, chalk, crayons. Once the children are ready we start to explore books in further detail such as different forms of print with different functions, the cover, author and page numbers and that we read English text left to right and top to bottom. We also explore rhyme and phonics and incorporate this into our everyday practice. Once the children are ready and they have practiced their mark making skills, we start to encourage them to start forming letters. This is achieved by exploring fun activities and encouraging them to eventually put pen to paper.

Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers.

By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding – such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting – children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

Offering lots of natural and found objects within the setting that children can freely explore. We offer treasure baskets with lots of resources that the children can explore with their senses. We regularly explore our outdoor natural phenomena such as splashing in puddles, walking through tall grass, exploring flowers and plants and exploring minibeast and animals. We also have a strong ethos of promoting British values and our own values within the setting. We base our behaviour expectations around values such as tolerance, kindness and community. We have a strong ethos to promote cultures and religion and regularly explore festivals and celebrations with the children to promote diversity. We also offer a range of activities that the children can explore to investigate their senses and make sense of the world around them.

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

Offering daily craft, painting and music. We introduce singing and rhymes as soon as the children start our setting. We have daily access to instruments and promote the children to explore the instruments and join in with singing, music and movement and yoga sessions.

We offer resources that encourage children to explore their imaginative skills and enable them to plan their own role play ideas.  

- Play based learning

- Child led learning 

- Self – Regulation 

- Sparking curiosity in our environment

- Varied opportunities for problem solving

- Incorporating our Pedagogy

- High quality, rich learning environment

- Open ended learning opportunities

- Natural resources and environment

- Having awareness of eco friendly practises

- Our values: Friendship, Respect & Equality, Kindness, Honesty, Responsibility, Challenge, Helpfulness, Courage, Community, Happiness, Success & Reflection 

- Strong, caring and nurturing Key Worker approach

- Nurturing environment

- Always start with what children can do, not what they cant

- Calm stimulating environment where children can concentrate, remain focused on their chosen tasks and learn at their own pace

- High regard to ensuring we develop strong nurturing relationships between staff, children, parents and carers, ensuring we value trusted and respectful relationships

- Opportunities for children to engage in repeated actions to make choices, errors and decisions. To not focus on making it perfect, but to focus on making it permanent and meaningful within the setting, but to also apply it in everyday experiences.

- High quality interactions that are meaningful and enjoyable, that instils a love for investigation, discoveries, learning and reading.

- Inclusive practice

- Regularly monitoring and reflection on our practice

- Role model effective communication and listening skills, through high quality interactions, conversations, singing and telling stories.  

- Patient and calm approach

- Facilitate play based experiences on children’s interests

- Understand, respond and meet children’s developmental and care needs

- Promote and encourage a ‘can do’ attitude

- Promote independence and self care skills 

- Great role models – modelling positive behaviour, empathy, resolving conflicts, compassion and tolerance

- Promote positive relationship and positive behaviour

- Promote techniques for self regulation, mindfulness and resolving conflicts

To be well rounded communicators that can use and understand a wide variety of vocabulary. To be able to have the confidence and knowledge to express their own wants, needs and opinions in meaningful conversations.

To understand questions or instructions involving two parts and can understand ‘why’ questions.

To develop emotional awareness of themselves and others, alongside tools and strategies to support regulating their feelings and emotions practically and in the moment, including resolving conflicts.  

To support our children being independent, resilient and having a ‘can do’ attitude to their learning.  

To have the confidence and independence to take care of their personal needs independently, including self help and toileting. 

 Form well rounded social skills including playing cooperatively and to have developed friendships with their peers. 

 Have a strong awareness of their bodies and how we can be healthy in relation to healthy eating and being active. To have awareness and techniques to support their mental and physical well being and health. Including how to be safe in their wider community. (Safeguarding)

 To effectively, appropriately and safely use one handed tools and have good fine motor strength. To have developing overall body and core strength and coordination including having the confidence to take physical risks in their play. Children will also have a deep understanding of spatial and positional awareness.

● A number has a meaning

● To be able to count confidently to 20, and to be able to count backwards from 10-0.

● Solving real life mathematical problems, including sequencing, sorting and categorising.

● To be aware and have understanding of concepts related to shape, space and measure. 

● To have understanding of what a pattern is and be able to make their own patterns

 To understand key concepts of print:

● Print has meaning 

● Print can have different purposes

● We read English text from left to right and from top to bottom(explore other cultures/countries)

● The names of the different parts of the book

● Page sequencing

● What is a character and how is a story sequenced

To have some developing understanding of phonological awareness.

To have developed a real love for reading.

 Develop an appreciation for our natural environments. Including care and respect for living things, having an awareness of eco-friendly practices and having a love for our world. 

 To have developing positive attitudes about the differences between people and to have awareness to confront stereotypes.

To have an understanding of our Little Stars Community and our local and wider community, including important members of our society.

To have fostered an understanding of the cultural, social, technological and ecological diverse world we live in.

Have awareness and understanding of life cycles, growth and decay.

To have an understanding of different forces and changes to materials and their properties.

To have the confidence to be expressive in many forms such as music, singing, dancing or using resources to create an end goal.  

To have an awareness of artistic and cultural forms of expression and arts.

 To have high regard to raising all children’s cultural capital and keying into giving each individual child any experiences they may not be able to offer at home or outside of our setting.

To be able to have the confidence and knowledge to express their own wants, needs and opinions in meaningful conversations by using a well developed and range of vocabulary. Have well rounded knowledge in regards to their emotional development. They will be able to recognise and express their emotions and the emotions of others and apply techniques and strategies to help support their regulation needs to resolve conflicts with their peers. They will have developed independence, self-confidence and self-resilience to enable them to potentially have a successful transition to the next stage of their education. By developing strong and secure relationships in a safe and caring environment. Including having an understanding of our core values and how to form caring, tolerant and respectful relationships with others. Children will have developed skills in holding one handed tools safely and appropriately to enable them to approach early writing with confidence. Also having overall body and core strength and coordination, enabling them to have the ability to assess and take their own risks in play and physical activities.

 Children will have an understanding of the meaning of print and how we can view it in many forms, alongside having awareness of letter sounds and a love for reading. They will also have skills in understanding mathematical concepts such as knowing a number has a meaning and solving real life mathematical problems as well as understanding concepts such as sorting, sequences, patterns, shapes and categorising.

 Children will have an understanding of and know the importance of health and well-being practices, as well as sustainable lifestyle choices and how we care for our environment. Children will have adopted a caring nature for their environment and have a positive regard for their community and important members of our society. Our children will also have awareness of practices and techniques to ensure they can have a healthy balanced diet and be active to stay healthy, including mental and physical well being practices and how to ‘stay safe’ in their wider community(safeguarding). They will have positive attitudes to others including differences others may have. They will have a strong sense of belonging to a community and what a community is as well as understanding in relation to life cycles, growth and decay, forces and changes in materials and their properties. Our children will have awareness of art and expression and have the confidence and experiences to express themselves and their individual ideas in many forms.