The Old School Henstead Nursery follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a statutory framework which assures high quality in learning, development and care.

There are six areas of learning and development all centred on the interests, development and needs of the individual child and this is how we aim to help children develop within them:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
· By working in partnership with parents, recognising that the settling-in process will be different for each child, talking about your child’s interests and celebrating achievements together
· By providing a nurturing environment with happy, smiling staff ensuring warmth, affection and lots of praise
· By encouraging children to share and make friendships using small group activities such as board games
· Visitors to the Old School Henstead  often remark upon the way the older children look after and care for the younger children. We would like to foster this within the Nursery by allowing older children to naturally interact with the nursery class during outside play times  
· Home/Nursery Links. By fostering strong links with home, encouraging children to discuss special events and bring in objects of interest. Perhaps a photo of being a bridesmaid to go on our ‘WOW’ board or maybe a favourite leaf which has been collected from a walk and can be shown during circle time
· By requesting that children wear slippers inside the nursery we will help children feel cosy, giving a homely, safer environment
· By supporting the development of independence skills
· By encouraging care and concern for others and for all living things and the environment
· By creating opportunities to talk about feelings through reading books and discussions

Communication, Language and Literacy
· By talking and listening to children; encouraging conversation, sensitively demonstrating pronunciation and ordering of words 
· By providing lots of opportunities to extend vocabulary and fluency through story time, where possible using props and finger puppets.
· By continually bringing new words to children during adult focused activities
· By exploring how language can be linked with physical and expressive forms such as body movement, art, dance and songs
· By listening to sounds in words and encouraging children to find objects that start with a particular sound
· By having lots of opportunities for experimenting with mark making: at the writing desk, on the wipe board, in the sand or even with cooked spaghetti!
· By providing an environment which is rich in print and graphics, through books, posters, on the computer as well names and labels around the nursery

 Knowledge and Understanding of the World
·By encouraging exploration and investigation in the natural world - windy day activities, blowing bubbles, pin wheels, flying a kite and running with chiffon scarves.
· By making a spring visit to Benacre Farm. This will be such a wonderful experience and a chance to encounter creatures in their natural environments.
· By making the most of the opportunities afforded by the Old School Nursery’s countryside location, e.g. to go bug collecting and exploring with magnifiers, to go pond dipping and so to discover the stages in animal life cycles. Our orchard will be a wonderful place for leaf collecting, fruit harvesting and jumping in crunchy leaves.
· By planting seeds, nurturing them and watching them grow.
· By finding out how things work;  computers, torches, electronic books. Also finding images and video clips on the interactive whiteboard to extend knowledge on a particular interest…. perhaps a film of an erupting volcano!
· By using fiction books, posters, photographs, postcards and calendars to reflect our multicultural society.
· By using small world toys to learn about new and challenging environments such as the deep ocean and outer space.

Physical Development
· By offering varied activities to improve a child’s co-ordination, control manipulation and movement, dancing with ribbons, ball games and ride-on toys are all everyday activities that promote and develop movement skills.
· By using Music and Movement to spontaneously express movement with sound.
· By running in an open space, up and down the grass hill and through the willow tunnels.
· By discussion about how our hearts beat fast after running and how physical activity helps us maintain a healthy lifestyle.
· By giving opportunities for den making, crawling, climbing under and negotiating movements to suit the space available.
· By walking around the grounds, finding and collecting by using fine motor skills.
· By offering healthy choices at snack times, for example cheese & grapes.
· By promoting the importance of staying healthy, for example by talking about how drinking milk keeps our bones and teeth strong.
· By ensuring that drinks are available throughout the session so children can drink freely as they would at home.

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
· By developing  understanding in a broad range of contexts during play, both inside and outside.
· By threading buttons and beads to encourage sorting, matching and sequencing skills.
· By using snack times as a perfect opportunity to explore real-life problems, ‘’how many cups do we need today?’’
· By measuring, weighing, counting, looking at numbers on the scales and using lots of mathematical language during cookery sessions.
· By developing problem solving skills. Reasoning and numeracy will be developed through songs, games and books.

Creative Development
· By allowing children the opportunity to develop their curiosity.
· By providing  various resources for art and craft activities such as twigs, leaves and feathers for making mobiles.
· By daily art and craft activities, both adult and child led, to ensure parents always have new art work for the  kitchen gallery at home.
· By developing imaginations through puppets, dressing up, small-world toys and role play in the farm shop.
· By using our weaving frame with many different resources, e.g. ropes, fabric, tin foil, ivy, ribbons and seaweed, to explore colour, texture, form, space and patterns.
· By enjoying music sessions, singing favourite songs along to the piano or the guitar and using instruments to explore sound and rhythm.
· By listening to various styles of music such as folk and classical, and for example,  discussing whether the music sounds happy or sad.
· By acting out stories with the children using facial expressions and props.
        
 

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