Nursery Ethos
“Good planning is the key to making children’s learning effective, exciting, varied and progressive” (Practise guidance for EYFS)
At Little Acorns we structure our day so that we can build up knowledge of our children, what they enjoy, how they learn and how we can help them progress.
Our planning is written with the children’s interests and needs in mind. Staff meet regularly to plan activities for the whole group to encourage learning and development, we feel that if the children are enjoying themselves and are excited and enthusiastic then this will lead to powerful learning.
Plans are of course flexible and adapt to circumstances.
In addition to our weekly plan we also asses and review what we know about individual childrens’ interests, development and learning so that we can make informed decisions about progress and plan the next steps to meet each individual child’s needs.
Children play spontaneously (although some may need adult support) and it is through play that they develop intellectually, creatively, physically, socially and emotionally. We therefore aim to provide activities which are “child initiated” supporting the children to learn with enjoyment and challenge. These plans are constantly being reviewed and updated and are available in each child’s “Learning Journey” book.