Nursery Curriculum

Indigo Valley Nursery is dedicated to taking extra special care of all your preschooler's early learning needs.  We realise each child is special and we will help and encourage your child to learn and develop.

Our Nursery Curriculum is based around the British Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework and incorporates guidelines from the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum ‘Te Whariki’ and Montessori.  Keeping each child's individual strengths and interests at heart and where children are granted the freedom to explore and play, igniting their passion and excitement for learning.

British Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

The Principles

A Unique Child –  recognises that every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured

Positive Relationships - describes how children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person.

Enabling Environments - explains that the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning.

Learning and Development - recognises that children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates, and that all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.

Embedded within the principles of the EYFS are six areas of Early Learning -How do we put these into practice?

Personal, Social and Emotional Development:

We recognize and value each child’s individual strengths and interests.  By supporting and extending these strengths and interests wherever we can, each child will see him or herself as a confident and capable young learner, curious and ready to discover the big wide world around them with strong social skills and a positive sense of themselves.

Communication, Language and Literacy:

We celebrate culture and so we celebrate language from countries all around the world. Children are encouraged to have fun with language and literacy every moment of the day through story-telling and visits to the Nursery library.  We recognize that ‘mark making’ is a vital step towards a strong understanding of the importance of literacy in our lives and so we encourage children to experiment and explore with different mark making tools every day.  Children leave for big school with a strong ability to communicate, speak and listen.

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy:

Our world of mathematical concepts develops through play.  The children extend their problem solving, reasoning and numeracy skills by pegging numbers onto the mathematical tree, or recreating shape patterns with potato stampers and paint, or measuring volume and capacity through pouring activities with cylinders.  We are always thinking of exciting ways to offer continuous challenges to encourage math through all contexts of the Nursery.

Knowledge and Understanding of the World:

Through play and hands on experiences children are able to make sense of their world.  Young children have an intrinsic need to experiment, explore, ask questions and make discoveries and so we are sure to foster this.  Activities such as making recycled paper, building a real erupting volcano in the sandpit with vinegar and baking soda or developing and taking care of their very own vegetable garden, support in the development of vital knowledge, skills and understanding of their world.

Physical Development:

Each child must develop holistically and so just as important as cognitive development we believe in physical development.  As we have such a beautiful garden we feel passionately about utilizing our outdoors as an ‘Extension of the Classroom.’  To help stimulate co-ordination, balance and movement at every opportunity we get, you will see us outdoors, getting back to nature, as we run, jump, skip and hop building on our gross motor skills. 

Creative Development:

From Kung-Fu to Ballet to Bharatnatyam, we have a passion for the creative arts.  We believe in the right for every individual to create and imagine freely and unhindered.  We love messy play, art and craft, junk modelling, role-play, dance, drama, music and movement. Creativity is our key to a strong sense of well-being and confidence.

None of these areas of Learning and Development can be delivered in isolation from the others. They are equally important and depend on each other to support a rounded approach to child development. All the areas must be delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities.

 

New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum

The Principles

Empowerment – The early childhood curriculum empowers the child to learn and grow.

Holistic Development – The early childhood curriculum reflects the holistic way children learn and grow.

Family and Community – The wider world of family and community plays an integral part of the early childhood curriculum.

Relationships – Children learn through responsive and reciprocal relationships with people, places and things.

Embedded within the principles of the NZ Early Childhood Curriculum are five strands of Early Learning – How do we put these into practice?

Well-Being:

We promote health and safety, ensuring that each child is nurtured and kept safe from harm. We feel that protecting a child’s wellbeing contributes to the development of the ‘whole’ view of the child and creates the right environment for meaningful and positive learning. With qualified Nurses on our Nursery staff, taking temperature checks three times per day, and weekly visits from a qualified Doctor, encouraging daily self-care through independence, dressing, washing and toileting we nurture each child’s sense of well-being.

Belonging:

From each child’s first day we make it our mission to create a loving environment where children feel they have a place that they belong. We take photographs each day, which are the basis for all fortnightly diaries and topic letters that we email to parents.  We love to celebrate birthdays and special events in each child’s life, perhaps the arrival of a new baby in the family or a visiting grandparent, each child feels valued and appreciated and they know that this is ‘their place.’

Contribution:

We believe in equal opportunities for learning, and that is why we are excited by the variety of culture and ethnicity in our Nurseries.  We go out of our way to affirm every child’s identity, welcoming them to share who they are and to work alongside their friends and peers.  We encourage every child to make their own contribution and to identify their own special strengths, allowing them to “make their own mark” in our Nursery.

Communication:

Children develop skills in verbal and non-verbal communication for a wide range of purposes.  We endeavour to extend their imagination through dance and drama and encourage children to recognize that these are valid ways of expressing or representing a feeling, experience, mood or thought.  We believe that it is our role to make a commitment to the languages of the world around us, in particular to the Arabic language in which we weave through into our day to day discussions and stories with children.

Exploration:

We value play as meaningful learning, and emphasize the importance of spontaneous and child-initiated play as a crucial step towards a child’s developing working theories about the natural, social, physical and material worlds.  We encourage children to explore and learn about their life experiences through play - by doing, asking questions, interacting and trying out ideas. We challenge children to think, ‘outside the box,’ and develop strategies for thinking, active exploration and reasoning.

How we incorporate the Montessori methods…

* We teach self-reliance and independence. This teaching method helps the children become independent by teaching him or her life skills, which is called practical life. Montessori children learn to dress themselves, help cook, put their toys and clothes away and take an active part in their household, neighborhood and school.

* For young children Montessori is a hands on approach to learning. It encourages children to develop their observation skills by doing many types of activities. These activities include use of the five senses, kinetic movement, spatial refinement, small and large motor skill coordination, and concrete knowledge that leads to later abstraction.

* In a Montessori environment, the teacher prepares and presents the materials needed for the child to carry out his/her great work, and offers them to the child in the form of individual or small group presentations. Once an initial presentation or lesson has been given the activities are freely chosen and frequently repeated according to a child's needs.