Curriculum

At Rose Buddies Childcare we strive to provide a home from home environment where children can grow and develop in an environment, where they feel comfortable, settled and valued. We aim to provide high quality education in a safe, respectful and inclusive environment that builds a solid foundation for life-long learning. All children are encouraged to learn through play and our incredible team of highly qualified practitioners work to meet the needs of each individual child and ensure every child is provided with opportunities to help them learn and develop.

“Each child is treated as family, and this helps them to feel secure and build confidence in themselves and their abilities. In turn they are then able to grow into intelligent, happy and confident adults”.

At Rose Buddies Childcare we believe that every child is unique. It is our duty as practitioners to ensure children are constantly learning and can be resilient, confident, capable and self-assured. We hold a strong focus on building positive relationships and creating enabling environments to allow our practitioners to respond to children’s individual needs including partnerships with parents. We tailor our teaching and learning to meet each unique child’s needs as we understand that all children develop and learn in different ways.

Pedagogy

We recognise that all children learn in their own way and that children generally learn best through play. We are committed to creating an enabling environment that fosters children’s play and extends their learning opportunities. Play not only supports children’s mental and physical health, but it also teaches them to problem-solve, take risks, build independence and promotes imagination and creativity. When building our environments we ensure that children have access to top quality resources that allow them to explore their interests and make decisions based on their wants and needs. Our practitioners will support the children to think both independently and collaboratively by inspiring, role modelling, challenging and extending their learning.

Our intentions

We understand that being away from your loved ones can be hard so it is our intention to create a home away from home for all our families where children can learn and develop. We aim to provide quality and consistency for all children to be able to thrive and have the very best start in life. Our hope is that all children in our care will develop verbally, physically and emotionally and continue to take on a positive attitude when approaching learning in their future. We work to have fantastic parent partnerships to ensure we are able to gain a clear idea of each and every child’s background allowing us to provide equality of opportunity ensuring every child is included and supported. We aim to provide education that is tailored to each individual child creating a child centred curriculum that puts the best interest of every child at its heart.

Implementing our curriculum

At Rose Buddies Childcare we keep each and every unique child at the heart of our curriculum. We provide and well-balanced curriculum that focuses on providing every child with the essential skills and knowledge they need to progress in life.

We feel that supporting children to communicate is one of the most important things we can teach them, we do this by:

Talking and interacting with children at their level.
Narrating play and tasks to role model language.
Lots of story time and singing.
Interventions to support children who are delayed.
Repetitive and consistent speech.
Duel language cards with images
Quiet zones to allow children to be heard.
Visual timetables.
Letters and sounds sessions during circle time.
Giving children time to respond when asked questions or given an instruction.
We use open ended questions to spark conversation.

We also want our children to go to school being resilient and emotionally ready to face any new challenge. We incorporate emotional self-regulation into our everyday practice by:

Providing quiet and cosy spaces for children to relax.
Building strong positive relationships.
Having a flexible key person approach that allows children to choose their own key person based on bonds where possible.
Speaking openly with children about their feelings and offering encouragement and support.
Providing sensory input through music, movement and interactive sensory areas.
Talking through our feelings and not dismissing emotional experiences.

We work alongside the Birth to Five Matters to support and guide our practitioners in developing activities and learning that covers all areas of learning and development. Our practitioners have an outstanding understanding of supporting children’s development and progression of skills from birth incorporating the early learning goals. Teaching is designed specifically for each individual child based on their needs and next steps are planned based on each child’s stage of development. We tailor our activities to link to each child’s interests to promote engagement and interactions. Our hope is that our excellent tailored curriculum will promote communication and language, curiosity and sustained thinking in all of our children.

More information about our curriculum...

We follow the EYFS \curriculum and use the Birth to Five matters to support our practitioners. The EYFS covers:

The 7 areas of learning

Personal, Social, Emotional Development.

Communications and Language

Physical Development.

Literacy

Mathematics

Understanding of the world

Expressive art and design.

A the very heart of the Early Years Foundations Stage Curriculum are the ‘Characteristics of Learning’:

Playing and exploring - Engagement

Active learning – Motivation

Creating and thinking critically

Our practitioners hold a high focus on building positive relationships and bonds with all children to allow them to create tailored next steps for each unique child, using their interests and learning styles to continue to build on and support prior knowledge and skills.

Practitioners provide high quality, meaningful interactions that support their delivery of our curriculum. We provide a wide range of activities and experiences including, group activities, focus activities, in small groups, 1-1 support, adult led play and child led play. All activities are planned around children’s current interests to support learning and continue to support gaps in their development.

Practitioners record regular observations and record children’s development on their flowers that are shared with our parents. All parents have a personal whatsapp page where our practitioners share daily updates of all the amazing activities their children are enjoying throughout the day and will receive observations and intervention updates through their whatsapp chats. Parents can also use this platform to keep us updated on milestones and development they are seeing at home. This continuous communication allows us to create a holistic view of each individual childs learning. Every child will receive a report of their learning and progression at the end of each term. This is shared with the parents and they are given an opportunity to provide feedback.

Prior to children starting at Rose Buddies Childcare all parents are invited for a show around and children are given a settle session before they start. All parents are asked to complete a starting point assessment to support us in identifying where their child is currently at. Our practitioners use the first few weeks with a child creating and recording their baseline which will allow us to create tailored next steps and planning for their child.

Intervention programmes or Special Educational Needs and Disabilities plans are put in place for any child that requires additional support. These plans help to ensure all children meet their full potential and make excellent progress.

Continuous provision is planned alongside our weekly themes to incorporate a wide range of activities and learning opportunities. We feel that creating an enabling environment for our children to learn in is essential to ensuring their progression and building their independence and curiosity.

The impact we have

At Rose Buddies Childcare we strive to ensure every unique child receives the best start in life and their experience and learning journey with us has equipped them with all of the essential skills and knowledge they need to go onto school ready for their next adventure into school. We want to ensure that all children leave us with a passion for learning.

Frequently asked questions and explanations

Are curriculum and planning the same thing? No! The curriculum is what we are teaching children, it is measurable progress, the areas of learning and the content. Planning is how we bring that content to life. It is how we structure our teaching and how we plan the experience we want the children to have.

What is Pedagogy? The method of teaching and learning. As we know everyone learns in different ways and as such we must teach using different methods to suit each learning style. Some different types of pedagogy are:

Constructivist Approach – Wherein teachers create a learner-centred environment inviting children to be active in their learning and teachers will facilitate learning by giving a problem and the equipment to fix it and allowing children to solve it with them guiding and supporting them.
Collaborative Approach – Promoting working together and sharing ideas in small groups. It encourages children to work together and share strengths.
Reflective Learning – Wherein we encourage learners to ask questions such as, what? Why? And how? It promotes reflection and encourages critical thinking.

Do we follow the EYFS, development matters or birth to 5 matters? All of the above. The EYFS is a statutory document. Its something that all settings and practitioners are required to follow however this can be flexible in the way we deliver it and there are different documents such as development matters and birth to five matters that support us to deliver the EYFS.

What is an enabling environment? An enabling environment looks at the physical aspects of our indoor and outdoor spaces but also the emotional environment we create. Creating an enabling environment means that we must know all of our children, their needs, their abilities and their interests. We ensure that everything in the environment is accessible and suitable for them and ensure that they feel comfortable, safe and cared for by building strong bonds with them.

What is a key person? A key person is the person allocated for each child. While all staff may care for all children a key persons role is to be “the person” for specific children and they will make sure that the child has a good relationship with them, checking their development and setting next steps to make sure that they are learning and developing. They will identify needs and make sure support is put in place for their key children.