Curriculum

Noah’s Ark Nursery Group follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum, which is a legal requirement. Its framework is designed to be fully inclusive of all children’s needs.

There are seven areas of learning and development. These are:

1   Personal, social and emotional development

2   Communication and language

3   Mathematics

4   Physical development

5   Understanding the world

6   Expressive arts and design

7   Literacy

These areas are delivered through planned, purposeful play through a combination of child-initiated and adult-led activities, with around 80% child initiated and 20% adult led.

We constantly monitor and evaluate our curriculum through observations of children and activities, parental feedback, children’s progress and staff meetings. This way, we can ensure the ever-changing needs of the children are met and can adapt our practice if appropriate. We are also inspected by Ofsted Early Years to ensure that the quality of our provision is appropriate to the EYFS, and the requirements for all children are provided for and met.

Key Person

Our ‘keyperson’ system gives each member of staff responsibility for a small number of individual children. Each child in the group has one special adult to relate to, which helps that child settle into the group more easily. In addition, the keyperson can tailor the group’s curriculum to the unique needs of each individual child. The keyperson maintains links with the child’s home setting, working with parents through shared record-keeping to ensure that all children are supported in reaching their full potential.

Our aim each session is: 

To provide a happy, safe and stimulating environment, in which the natural learning process of all children may be extended through play, enabling them to develop socially, physically, intellectually, communicatively and emotionally.

Our objective is:

To prepare children for future learning by supporting them in building a firm foundation through productive play-based activities.

How we aim to achieve our objectives:

We aim to have free-flow movement between indoor and outdoor activities. Our garden enables children to experience their natural world, including the weather and insects, as well as planting seeds and harvesting crops.

We have a wide range of bikes, ride-on and other traditional outdoor toys to suit all ages and abilities. 

We provide opportunities for imaginative play indoors and outdoors with a wide variety of 

small-world toys.

Children can start to develop early writing skills both indoors and outdoors using a variety of equipment, such as paints, pens and chalks. 

We bring problem solving into the children’s self-chosen activities and our daily routines, while shape, size and measurement-related learning is delivered through construction and block play.

Our role-play area encourages children to act out their own first-hand experiences and feelings.  We provide opportunities for children to listen to and talk about stories and their experiences.

We encourage and support the children to celebrate their own and their peers’ achievements.