Prime Areas of Learning

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

The inside and outside environments allow the children to interact with each other positively, communicate effectively using their words, listen to each other and take turns. The children are beginning to make choices about where they want to play and with what. The children develop their independence and learn how to do things for themselves. Boundaries and expectations are important to us, and we use a recognition board system to help children understand and follow expectations.

Communication and Language

Children are given a range of opportunities to initiate conversation with others. Children develop their social communication as well as mastery of specific vocabulary related to topic themes, through a range of self-initiated and adult-led activities.

Physical Development

In the outside area of the learning environment the children are able to use lots of different to equipment in order to develop their gross and fine motor skills, safely and confidently. Children to play safely, negotiating space and avoiding obstacles, including each other! These ‘gross motor skills’ are really important to develop muscles that will support fine motor skills in the future e.g. writing.

Specific Areas of Learning

Literacy

We have story areas inside and outside the learning environment. Children are able to use story props to retell a familiar story. They can use the role play areas to imagine being a characters that they know. There have been lots of opportunities for the children to make marks using a wide variety of resources including chalk, paint, felt tips, ‘paint’ computer program, crayons and water. They have been learning how to hold the resources, developing a pincer grip and establishing their dominant hand, right or left.

Mathematics

Opportunities to develop mathematical skills are all around the nursery environment and the staff play alongside the children, modelling mathematical language, counting, comparing, sorting, estimating and talking about and building with shapes and puzzles.

Understanding of the World

Our environment allows children to explore the world around them including people, places, animals, plants, objects and the environment itself. They use their senses to investigate and explore and talk about what they can see, hear, smell and touch. There are daily opportunities to play with ‘small world’ toys and our lunchtime routine are a quiet opportunity to reflect on and discuss what they have done throughout the day.

Expressive Arts and Design

Our music corner allows the children to dance along to the music, sing songs and experiment with the wide variety of musical instruments available to them. The adults have been teaching the children how to play the instruments correctly and find out how many different sounds they can make. There are multiple mark making opportunities for children with resources in both the inside and outside environment.