Youth Club Pre-School

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The curriculum provided by the Pre-school

Children start to learn about the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by our pre-school helps children to continue to do this by providing all of the children with interesting activities that are right of their age and stage of development.

Birth to Three Matters

For children from two and a held to three years we give regard to the “Birth to Three Matters” framework the sets out four key entitlements for young children. Our pre-school supports and promotes the entitlement of every young child to be and become:

A strong child

A strong child is about young children being strong, confident, capable and self-assured. To do this they need to feel secure within the nurturing care of their key worker in their pre-school.

Young children are getting to know themselves and what they can do; the respect, care, loves and emotional support they receive helps them develop trust and positive self-image. The way we acknowledge and affirm young children leads them to gain confidence and inner strength. Having close relationships with them promotes self-assurance and sense of belonging in our pre-school. This gives them a secure base to learn and try new experiences.

A skilful communicator

Through being with key workers who care for them in the pre-school, young children will become skilful communicators. They make friendships where they will learn about other people, communicating and sharing their feelings and experiences. They will learn to have a voice that they are listened to respond to in a way that supports their understanding and search for meaning, helping them to learn the skills they will need for communicating with others. Through opportunities for talk with adults and peers, through sustained interactions, through stories, songs, mime and gesture, children will learn to become skilful communicators.

A competent learn

Children are learners from birth. They are actively involved in exploring their environment, using their senses to build up their knowledge young about the world. Our pre-school offers o young children the opportunity to take part in planned and unplanned activities that will help them  make connections with what they already know and build new understandings to help them from more complex ideas about the world. They will have opportunity to be imaginative and creative; to express their ideas and represent them.

A healthy child

The healthy child is one who is emotionally secure and knows that he/she can depend on carers to meet his/her needs. Through our key worker approach we aim to provide young children with secure relationships as affirm foundation for them to gradually learn to become independent at their own pace. Young children will have their needs for good nutrition, play and rest met so that their growth and development are assured. We provide an environment that protects children from harm and abuse; we minimise risk to children, but at the same time provide a safe structure in which they can learn o take their own risks, such as climbing or riding a bike. We provide boundaries within which they learn about being with others in a social group.

The Foundation Stage Curriculum

For children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, the pre-school provides a curriculum for the foundation stage of education. This curriculum is set out a document, published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Department for Education and Skills, and called Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage. The pre-school follows the 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 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. The pre-school 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:

• 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 each other people, both children and adults;
• Becoming aware of – and being able to keep the -  the rules which we need to help us to look after ourselves, other people and our environment;
• Being able to dress and undress themselves, and look after their personal hygiene needs;
• Being able to expect to have their ways of doing things respected and to respect other people’s ways of doing things.

Communication language and literacy

This area of children’s development covers;

• Being able to use conversation with one person, in small groups and in large groups to 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 and 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
• Making their own attempts at writing.

Mathematical development

This area of children’s development covers:

• Building up ideas about how many, how much, how far and how big;
•  Building up ideas about patterns, shapes of objects and parts of objects, and the amount of space taken 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;
• Being introduced to finding the result of adding more or 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 chose-and use-the right tool for a task;
• Learning about computers, how to use them and what they can help us to do;
• Starting to put together ideas about past and present an the links between them;
• Beginning to learn about their locality and it’s special features;
• 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 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 we can make our arms wrists and hands, so that they can pick up and use objects, tools and materials;
• Learning about the importance of – and how to look after – their bodies.

Creative development

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 the way that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play 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 pre-school uses the early learning goals and their stepping-stones to plan and provide a range of play activities that 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.

Special needs

As part of the pre-school’s policy to make sure that its provision meets the needs of each individual child, we take account of any special needs that a child may have. The pre-school works to the requirements of the 1993 Education Act and The Special Educational Needs Code of Practice (2000). The pre-school’s Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator is Debbie Combs (Deputy Supervisor).