Nursery Early Years
The Curriculum of the school is designed to help achieve these objectives. In a nursery school the curriculum is embodied in activities rather than set lessons or separate subjects. Children learn through play at this stage – indeed play is the child’s work. Unless children have acquired a task-like attitude to play it will be difficult for them to adjust to the more structured environment of the primary school. It is important, therefore, that play in the nursery school should not be haphazard, or totally spontaneous. Our aim is to strike a balance between spontaneous play and structured or guided activities.
Our Teaching Programme includes varied activities designed to encourage children’s development. Provision is made for imaginative play; for experience with natural materials (sand, water, clay); for designing, constructing and making; for experimentation in creative activities and for physical boisterous play. Through these experiences, children’s powers of language and their understanding of the natural and the built world will be extended. Physical abilities and co-ordination will develop and levels of concentration and persistence will be raised.
There is a great emphasis on language development in the school, particularly on concept-related language, which will later be the basis for mathematical understanding; on expressing language in sentences and using sentences in sequence; plus a rich vocabulary, essential before children start to read.
Science, mathematics, I.C.T. (computer studies), music and the humanities are also included in the curriculum, which is based on the curriculum guidance for the Foundation Stage.