Elsworth Pre-School Curriculum 2022.

 Our setting provides all aspects from the Statutory Educational Programmes as detailed in the Early Years Foundation Stage. We also go beyond this with our tailor made experiential curriculum packed full of exciting learning experiences for every child.​

​

Our experiential curriculum is tailored so that learning is child-led, centred around individual children’s needs and interests, enhanced by adults who sensitively question and support children through learning moments with enhanced resources and experiences to develop these further.

 ​

Curriculum Goals

• To become a confident learner

• To choose a food to bake for a parent's picnic

• To plant a seed and care for a plant

• To collaborative design and make a model

• To write their first name

• To throw and catch a ball

• To put on a show

• To understand patterns and quantity

• To prepare for and experience a community outing

​

 To become a confident learner

Component 1: Children spend time with their key person, building a bond and a caring friendly relationship.

Component 2: Children develop play and learning preferences, supported by their key person and other practitioners.

Component 3: Children begin to communicate with other peers and begin to play alongside then with others, developing their play and learning, supported by their key person or other practitioner.

Component 4: To expand the children’s interests by participating in new experiences with some support.

Component 5: Children extend their peer relationships gaining confidence to contribute and extend play.

Goal: Children are confident with their keyperson and peers alike. They lead their play as well as join in with that led by peers, contributing, and engaging in conversation. Children learn through experimenting and are able to reflect, adapt and persevere. Children recognise their achievements in an age-appropriate way.

 

 

To choose a food to bake for a parent’s picnic

Component 1: Children experiment with tools in the sand and other sensory materials e.g., scooping, tipping, digging, filling.

Component 2: Children experiment with ‘cooking’ in pretend play in the home corner and in the mud kitchen.

Component 3: With support children take part in food preparation activities in small groups (including snack), recognising the need for hygiene and safety.

Component 4: Children look at menus and recipes in play, choosing what they would like to make before considering the ingredients they would need experimenting with weight and measure.

Component 5: Begin to develop an understanding of a healthy lifestyle including a balanced diet through food activities, play and circle time discussions.

Goal: Children independently and hygienically bake a food chosen from a recipe book including planning ingredients, weighing, measuring and following the recipe instructions.

​

 

To plant a seed and care for the plant

Component 1: Children show an interest in the natural world around them, exploring with all of their senses.

Component 2: Children comment on the world around them including textures, colours and sizes beginning to ask questions about what they observe both in the garden and local environment.

Component 3: Children plant and grow vegetables with support, beginning to develop an understanding of the needs of plants and growth.

Component 4: Children observe and comment on differences in the environment, developing an understanding of growth, decay, seasons and caring for the environment beginning to understand our impact on it.

Component 5: Children experiment with plants to explore their needs and how they get them. For example; flowers absorbing coloured water or depriving a plant of 1 essential need (water or sunlight or soil) and observe what happens, thinking of why with support.

Goal: Children plant a seed understanding what it needs to thrive. Nurture the plant and make comments on their observations as it grows, using increased language to explain their understanding including the use of mathematical and comparative language.

 

To collaboratively design and make a model

Component 1: Children build towers and/or structures using loose parts, bricks, or other construction materials.

Component 2: Children use tools to effect change on materials (eg cutting paper, card, leaves etc)

Component 3: Children begin to play games together, including using objects for props purposefully and making marks as part of their imaginative play.

Component 4: Children build with a purpose in mind using a range of resources; choosing them purposefully to support their play or construction (eg box for a house, loose parts and blocks for a farmyard).

Component 5: With support children negotiate play with peers, making compromises when playing structured games or imaginary games, developing them to incorporate others’ ideas as they build and construct.

Goal: With a peer or in a small group, children decide on a model to make together, compromising and considering others’ opinions and wishes. They plan what they will need, the quantity of each sometimes-making marks to represent these. They reflect on their progress and make adjustments as needed to make their model work with minimal adult support.

 

To write their first name

Component 1: Children experiment with mark-making in their choice of mediums. For example, using sticks in mud, drawing in sand, painting, stamping.

Component 2: Children engage in largescale mark making using paintbrushes, water sprayers, rollers etc. Sometimes ascribing meaning or purpose to the marks that they make when asked.

Component 3: To mark-make with a purpose in mind (e.g., representing people, experiences, quantity, or words through marks), Beginning to ascribe meaning to the marks they make.

Component 4: To engage in purposeful small-scale mark making, developing their pencil grip to a tripod grip, and being able to explain the marks they make.

Component 5: To trace their name with support using a letter formation aid. Writing their name using paintbrushes and water, in sensory materials such as sand or mud.

Goal: To independently write the letters of their name so that they are recognisable with some letters formed correctly. Consideration should be given to the length of the name/quantity of letters in the child’s name.

 

To throw and catch a ball

Component 1: Children engage in gross motor activities, developing muscle strength including climbing, balancing, and running.

Component 2: Children experiment with trajectory or items through the use of ramps, rolling, water, squirters, cars or other items of choice.

Component 3: To take part in activities such as rolling a ball to each other in a circle or putting curtain rings on a mug tree to improve hand to eye co-ordination.

Component 5: Children catch a large ball thrown to them by an adult with increasing accuracy, developing an understanding of putting their hands out ready to receive and looking at the ball with adult scaffolding.

Component 6: Children throw a range of balls and beanbags at a target area with increasing accuracy. With support predicting how long it will take, where it might land, how high it will go with some reasoning.

Goal: Children throw a medium sized ball to another person a short distance away and catch a medium sized ball when thrown directly to them. Children count the catches with an adult reflecting on their progress and adjusting their technique to increase accuracy.

 

To put on a show

Component 1: Children begin to have a preference of favourite songs or books, joining in with repetitive words or lines. Some children may choose to repeat these rhymes or phrases in play.

Component 2: Children experiment with different musical instruments (rhythm, tempo, volume) and begin to move to the music, matching the beat/rhythm.

Component 3: Children participate in reading familiar stories, finishing sentences, and joining in with repeated refrains. Using props to support the telling of the story (for example use of story sacks) in an interactive way exploring how the different characters behave and sound.

Component 4: Children tell a story from a book. Using the pictures as an aid, saying what the pictures show as the ‘story’. With support children use instruments to match the feeling/atmosphere in the book.

Component 5: In a small group retell a story (maybe using props and dressing up materials). To repeat key phrases from the story as they retell it adding expression through actions or tone of voice.

Goal: Children choose a show to perform, this might be story or song based or something different. Children may use resources creatively to support their show narrative.

 

To understand patterns and quantity

Component 1: To construct and build using blocks, boxes, and loose parts.

Component 2: To show an interest in puzzles and problem-solving games with a mathematical focus.

Component 3: To identify numerals and recite numbers up to 5, representing them on their fingers and saying one number name for each item.

Component 4: To identify and explore patterns and symbols in the environment, commenting and beginning to talk about their understanding.

Component 5: Explore and develop the language of quantity, size, length, and weight through open-ended play with supportive questioning from practitioners.

Component 6: To explore and experiment quantity, grouping and sequencing using a TENS frame, making repeating patterns etc.

Goal: To be able to create a repeating pattern using small or large loose parts and confidently understand the quantity to 5 in depth including cardinality, more than, less than, and the use of comparative language.

 

To prepare for and experience a community outing

Component 1: To engage in small world play, exploring and beginning to influence their play through first-hand experiences. (eg farm, town, garage, beach, small world).

Component 2: To talk about experiences that they have had with their family. Eg, holidays, birthdays, outings, weekend activities.

Component 3: To go for a village walk taking notice of what they can see, key community places and making comments about what they observe including the similarities and differences between old and new features and buildings.

Component 4: To look at facilities in the local community, using technology to search and viewing local magazines etc.

Component 5: To role play visiting a café, including being the customer and waiter. Choosing from the menu, taking an order. Producing a bill and paying for the bill.

Goal: To plan a community trip, finding and looking at the opening times, making a booking, considering transport, the menu, how to order food and how to pay.