Our Curriculum

The aim of Brookside’s curriculum is to offer children a broad range of experiences which build foundations to not only future learning but for their entire life.  Our curriculum is flexible and is tailored to the needs and background experiences of the particular cohort of children and their individual needs.

 

Our curriculum is shaped on the 7 areas of learning within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) along with the Development matters framework.

 

Our Curriculum goals outline what we aspire children to achieve during their time with us.  These goals are not just academic achievements, the goals are made up of values, social and emotional skills, learning attitudes and a breadth of experiences which we feel will ensure children are not only ‘school ready’ but ‘life ready’.

 

Our Curriculum aims to offer a broad range of rich learning experiences to all children, we take our children for regular walks in the local community and woodlands, engage in local community projects, we have our own local allotment where children grow vegetables and plants, we offer forest school sessions, ballet classes and daily yoga sessions.  

 

Language and communication is central to our curriculum.  Knowledgeable practitioners offer a language rich environment with daily language and literacy focused small group times.  Children are read a story each session, they are supported to develop a love of books which supports early literacy and language skills.  During free play children are encouraged to ask questions and discover the world around them.

 

Role of the adult

Practitioners play a crucial role in supporting and enhancing children’s learning and development by interacting sensitively and skillfully. The role of the adult is mostly to enable and facilitate learning by providing an enabling environment, encouraging, explaining, demonstrating, questioning, recalling, communicating and modelling language, setting challenges and exploring ideas.   

 

The best outcomes for children’s learning occur where most of the activity within a child’s day is a mixture of:

• child-initiated play, actively supported by adults

• focused learning, with adults guiding the learning through playful, rich experiential activities

 

Routine

Our daily routine is carefully planned to offer a good balance of child-led and adult led learning.  We are flexible with our routine, practitioners are able to use their best judgement on which approach suits the needs of the children and their interests at the time. 

Our routine offers careful structure to facilitate independence, opportunity to be involved in a group and develop essential listening and attention skills.