Early Years Curriculum

The Early Years Foundation Stage at Oliver’s Battery Primary and Nursery School includes the Nursery and Reception classes. In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), children are encouraged to learn through a curriculum based on active play and exploration.

There are seven areas of learning and development.

These are divided into three prime areas and four specific areas which are:

Prime Areas

Communication and language
Physical development
Personal, social and emotional development

Specific Areas

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world; and
Expressive arts and design

Opportunities are provided for children to learn and develop in different ways.

These are called the ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’. These are:

Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements; and
Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

At Oliver’s Battery Nursery, we provide an environment which offers a range of first-hand experiences. Your child will always be given the very best care, utmost respect and total commitment from our well qualified staff so they can learn and develop at their own pace. We embrace a learning environment which enables your child to play and explore in a safe and secure environment. Our rooms have been carefully planned to allow a free flow of non-interrupted play and include cosy, calm and inviting corners to promote children’s language skills.

Phonics

Children in their last year of Nursery class have daily short sessions using ‘Foundations for Phonics’ from our whole school phonics scheme ‘Little Wandle’. This is an introduction to phonics and one of the most important aspects of Foundations for phonics is developing an awareness of sound, through activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending. At this stage the children are not taught the letters (graphemes). Our aim is for the children going to school are well prepared to begin grapheme–phoneme correspondence and blending at the start of Reception.

Maths

Our setting uses a ‘Number Sense’ pedagogy. Number sense is a concept that explains a child’s ability to both understand and use numbers in practice, it refers to a group of key maths abilities. These include:

Understanding quantities
Grasping concepts like more and less, and larger and smaller
Understanding the order of numbers in a list: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.
Understanding symbols that represent quantities (7 means the same thing as seven)
Making number comparisons (12 is greater than 10)
Recognizing relationships between single items and groups of items (seven means one group of seven items)

This approach supports children to access a Primary Maths Curriculum.

Oliver’s Battery Aspirational Curriculum

Our aspirational curriculum is unique to our school and has been specifically designed to prepare the children in Nursery and Year R to be successful learners in the future. They encompass the school's vision, values, and the ambitions we share and make our offer unique.

Aspiration 1: To be a happy and confident outdoor learner..

Aspiration 2: To make a model at Forest School/Outside.

Aspiration 3: To make up their own story.

We track the progress of the children towards each aspiration using milestones:

Nursery Curriculum Aspiration Journey

Aspiration 1: To be a happy and confident outdoor learner
Milestone 1
What the child does	How adults support
Children make a strong relationship with their key person. Increasingly, they separate confidently from their parent at the start of the session and become involved in their play. They use their key person as a ‘secure base’ throughout the session, ‘touching base’ as/when needed. The child explores the setting inside and starts to explore outside with their key person. As children grow in confidence, their involvement in nursery activities deepens. They explore a wider range of activities. They play for longer periods of time. They play alongside friends. They play collaboratively. They develop their pretend play.	Where children need individualised and additional help, this will be offered promptly. Help includes: settling sessions. An hour visit with parent in setting, meeting their key person. Followed by a second visit for the child to spend an hour with key person and other members of staff. An individualised settling in programme will be introduced if needed. Resources are freely available and kept consistent. Adults observe children’s interests and provide enhancement to support them.
Milestone 2
What the child does	How adults support
Children take part in pretend play, communicating and negotiating with their friends inside and outside. They know their way around the setting and are able to select items to play with. As children’s engagement and perseverance grows, they either challenge themselves with more difficult activities, or they respond positively to adults challenging them.	Adults ensure resources are at hand for children to explore inside and out. Children help to tidy up to learn where items belong.
Milestone 3
What the child does	How adults support
Children have repeated experiences of play outside. They start to know where resources are and start to have an idea of what they want to achieve in their play. Playing and interacting, socialising and playing freely with each other.	Adults to talk to the children to see what resources they would like to play with. Supporting the children to make independent choices.
What being a happy and confident outdoor learner looks like:
Children are confident when selecting resources. They know where resources are and have a good idea of what they want to achieve in their play.	Adults to let children to lead the way scaffolding to develop the children’s learning.

Aspiration 2: To make a model at Forest School / outside
Milestone 1
What the child does	How adults support
Children to explore and experience Forest School. Children to become an accustomed to Forest School rules.	Forest School Leader and adults to set up and run Forest School sessions. FS Leader to set up activities to allow the children to explore the environment. FS Leader to set up routine of FS eg sitting round fire circle, FS rules, boundaries and danger flags. If a child doesn’t attend FS adults need to ensure the child gets to explore natural materials outside.
Milestone 2
What the child does	How adults support
Children to become more confident while attending FS. Children to have an understanding of the FS Rules. Children start to play with a variety of natural materials.	FS Leader and adults to ensure the routine of FS is followed in all session, including rules. FS Leader and adults to ensure resources are at hand for children to explore at Forest School.
Milestone 3
What the child does	How adults support
Children have repeated experiences of natural materials. Clay and other materials to be introduced. Children start to know where to find resources and start to have an idea of what they want to achieve in their play. Playing and interacting, socialising and playing freely with each other.	Adults to talk to the children to see what resources they would like to play with. Supporting the children to make independent choices. Adults to role model creating with the different resources. Using sticks and other natural items to create models.
What being a successful model maker looks like:
Children are confident when selecting resources. They have an idea of what they wish to create and an idea of how to create it. They are confident in their creating.	Adults to let children to lead the way scaffolding to develop the children’s learning.

Aspiration 3: To make up their own story
Milestone 1
What the child does	How adults support
Children to take part in pretend play, role playing, making up and developing a story while they play.	Adults to supply resources for children to play with. Such as farm or wild animals. Adults to role model making up stories while playing. Adults to supply a home corner with costumes and items they know from their home lives. Including books.
Milestone 2
What the child does	How adults support
Children will join in with shared stories in small groups, talking about what has happen and what could happen next as they listen and look at the stories together. Sharing story sacks in groups. Children will engage in singing nursery rhymes together as a group.	Adults to read lots of stories pointing out items in the pictures and talking about it. Adults to give children chance to talk about them while being read to. Adults to ensure stories and story sacks with props are available for children to retell stories. Adults supply lots of opportunities for singing rhymes through the day.
Milestone 3
What the child does	How adults support
Children are able to select story sacks by themselves. To be able to retell and make up stories. Children have pictures and props and are encouraged to make up different stories.	Adults to allow children to become more independent by suppling story sacks in the different areas. Adults to role model making up stories about pictures, or toys etc. Adults to include time for making up stories.
What being able to make up their own story looks like:
Children use resources to make up stories, these could be in the form of using pictures, toys or story sacks,	Adults to let children to lead the way in making up stories. Adults to show an interest by listening and encouraging and praising the children’s stories.