The Early Years Foundation Stage
From birth, children instinctively reach out to explore and learn about the world around them. They love to touch, to taste; they turn inquisitively toward new sounds, smile at familiar voices; they reach for bright colours, explore interesting shapes. Learning is a process that involves all of the senses, especially touch, and the senses feed the child’s absorbent and eager mind. Our curriculum the Early Years Foundation Stage begins from birth and continues through until the child reaches its 5th birthday.
At Cute Kids Montessori Nursery School the seeds of learning are planted in the fertile ground of a child’s natural curiosity and joy in discovery; thus nurturing through the first five years of the child’s initiative to explore and to question, to engage with the world, to learn, and to emerge as a creative, imaginative, independent life-long learner.
Classes are mixed aged from 2 to 5 years old, each with its own carefully organised curriculum to accommodate the individual learning styles of each child.
Our curriculum (EYFS Framework) further provides the opportunity for the children to discover what the world is like, how it works, what he/she is capable of, and his/her place in it. The daily routine activities are from the EYFS Framework which includes four guiding principles:
• Every child is a Unique child
• Children learn to be strong and independent through Positive Relationships
• Children learn and develop well in Enabling Environment
• Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) includes seven areas of learning and development, namely:
Science experiences are built into outdoor planting area and using the sand pit, nurturing and caring for living things and maintaining their natural habitat-(the nursery pets snails).
Mathematics and Literacy are built into the nursery’s day to day activities e. g. Mealtimes, tidying up when engaged with practical life skills, counting plates, cups, cutlery, table mats, colours of the objects being used for activities, shaping our breads for sandwiches, pouring water, emptying remnant of food into the food bin for recycling, naming all objects as they use them.
The quality of early years experiences provided at Cute Kids Montessori Nursery School empowers the children to become a successful lifelong learner that is secured, embraced the world and their environment as an invitation to learn, grow, have fun and reach their full potentials through the activities they planned and carried out themselves.
It is aimed that with support of our committed and dedicated staff, the children will develop intellectually, creatively, physically, socially, emotionally and learns the enjoyment of challenges through play.
The EYFS Profile and the Transition form is completed for all the children as they reach the age of five. The profile provides parents/carers with a well – rounded picture of a child’s knowledge, understanding and abilities, their progress against expected levels, their readiness for reception or year 1 class.
Contained in our EYFS Profile is the child’s ongoing observation. Also contains record on the child, comments and discussion with parent/carers, evidences of activities, photographs of the child’s engagements, trips and other relevant information about the child.
The EYFS Profile enables parents/carers to track the children’s level of developments against the early learning goals; if the children are meeting the expected levels of development or if they are exceeding expected levels, or not yet reaching expected levels (‘emerging’)
Our Observations and comprehensive learning journey records of your child
Childcare Gateways is a secure online record of observations that stores the child’s learning journey. It enables teachers to record observations of children’s activities holistically and in a manner that’s reflective to Montessori principles and values.
Childcare Gateways enables teachers to record their observations, and other events at nursery, lesson plans and to automatically track the progress children are making in their learning, and to generate statutory reports in line with the Department for Education on children’ developmental milestones, to support teacher’s planning, and facilitate parent-teacher collaboration in furthering a child’s progress and next step.
The ultimate benefits of Childcare Gateways are the children as more time is allocated to them than paperwork:
• Teachers will spend less time on record-keeping,
• Give the children more face-to-face time
• Receive deep and comprehensive insights on how to support each child’s unique learning journey;
• Parents are shown how to offer complementary learning opportunities to their children when they’re at home.
• Childcare Gateways is secure and parents friendly. Easy to use and accessible 24/7. Parents can access pictures, videos, observations and download memorable home events unto the child’s record at the click of a button.
• Parents can easily access their platform from their smart phone and tablet.
• Parents can send messages and comment on observations made by the nursery staff and can create their own observations to share with the nursery.
• Partnership with parents is enhanced positively when some communication barriers are removed between home and nursery.
• Parents are provided with their individual unique pin which is given to parents by the nursery via email to authorise accessing the individual child’s records. The children’ data are safely secured and cannot be accessed by other search engines.