Our curriculum and monitoring progress
“Children are eager to get into the classroom. They happily engage with the adults and the activities on offer. Children display a can-do attitude and focus on their chosen tasks. Children play well with their peers, sharing and taking turns.”
OFSTED
Children are at the heart of everything we do
Child-led Learning
At Carey Hall, we subscribe to child-led learning as this enables the three characteristics of effective learning to happen: playing and exploring, active learning, creating and critical thinking.
Nurturing Independence
By using the children’s interests to plan activities for the term, we nurture their independence and ignite a love for learning. It is through this child-centred, play-orientated approach that the 7 key areas of the ‘My Development Matters’, the statutory early years curriculum, are taught.
Community trips
An example of our approach to child-led learning can be seen in our frequent trips in the community. The children often ask about the local parklands they see whilst coming to and from preschool and so this term’s learning was ‘Our Natural Environment’. Another area of interest for the children was pirates. These were combined and the learning included taking the children to local parks to use treasure maps on a hunt, making masks, discussing ships, sea life, and much, much more.
My Development Matters
The 7 areas of learning in My Development Matters are structured into three ‘prime’ areas, that underpin all early years learning:
Communcation & Language
Physical Development
Personal, Social & Emotional Development
Then four specific areas help children to strengthen and apply these prime areas:
Literacy
Mathmatics
Understanding the World
Art & Design
We measure the progress of children using the My Development Matters milestones. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities. However, we also have regular moderation meetings to monitor whether any children need additional support in specific areas, such as speech, language and communication.
“The manager works in close partnership with various agencies to support children with
special educational needs and/or disabilities.” OFSTED
We document our children’s learning using hard copy learning journals that the children make with their key educator throughout their time at Carey Hall. Once a term, each child has a ‘focus week’, where they are observed in each of the 7 areas of learning and this subsequently documented with pictures in their journal. The children love to cut, stick, draw and put stickers on their journals. This process encourages them to reflect on their progress and to take pride in their learning by setting their own targets.
At the end of the children’s time at Carey Hall, their journals become a keepsake for both them and their caregivers, to look back on their first school experience.