Curriculum
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. St. Chad’s Pre-school uses the Early Years Foundation Stage Practice Guidance to plan and provide a range of play activities with help children to make progress in each of the areas below of learning and development.
We also work in line with the ‘Every Child Matters’ framework to support children and their families to be healthy, feel safe, enjoy and achieve and to make positive contributions during their time with us.
This area of children’s development covers:
- having a positive approach to learning and finding out about the world around them;
- having confidence in themselves and their ability to do things, and valuing their own achievements;
- being able to get on, work and make friendships with other people, both children and adults;
- becoming aware of – and being able to keep to – the rules which we all need to help us look after ourselves, other people and our environment;
- being able to dress and undress themselves, and look after their personal hygiene needs; and
- being able to expect to have their ways of doing things respected and to respect other people’s way of doing things.
This area of children’s development covers:
- being able to use conversation with one another, in small groups and in large groups with talk and listen to others;
- adding to their vocabulary by learning the meaning of – and being able to use – new words;
- being able to use words to describe their experiences;
- getting to know the sounds and theatre which make up the words that we use;
- listening to – and talking about – stories;
- knowing how to handle books and understanding that they can be a source of both stories and information;
- knowing the purpose for which we use writing; and
- making their own attempts at writing.
This area of children’s development covers:
- gaining control over the large movements which we make with our arms, legs and bodies so that they can run, jump, hop, skip, roll, climb, balance and lift;
- gaining control over the small movements that 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.
The further specific areas that we also support are Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the world and Expressive arts and design.
This area of children’s development covers:
- listening to and talking about stories and rhymes;
- knowing how to handle books and understanding that they can be a source of both stories and information;
- give meaning to marks they make as they draw and paint; and
- making their own attempts at writing
This area of children’s development covers:
- starting to understand that numbers help us answer questions, i.e. how many? How far?
- building on ideas about how to estimate and count within their play activities
- building ideas about patterns, the shape and parts of objects and the amount of space taken up by objects.
This area of children’s development covers:
- having an interest in the lives of people who are familiar as well as their own and other cultures;
- finding out about the natural world and how it works;
- learning how to choose, and use, the right tool for a job;
- learning how to operate simple equipment and begin to build computer skills.
This area of children’s development covers:
- using paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role play to express their ideas and feelings;
- becoming interested in new ways that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role play can be used to express their ideas and feelings.
