Our Ethos
The importance of early years
At Little Explorers Nursery School, we understand the importance of the early years.
We know that 90% of brain development happens before age 5, during which time, the brain is tirelessly forming connections, peaking at around 1000 trillion connections at age 3.
We know the huge impact that adults can have by supporting and promoting child development.
Play-based learning
As adults, we often think of play as the opposite of work. However, in early years, we understand that ‘play is the work of childhood’. The right to play is even enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
At Little Explorers Nursery School, we do not push early academics. Research suggests that early academic education has no long-term benefit, and may actually have a detrimental long-term effect. Instead, we follow children’s emerging interests in ways that are developmentally appropriate for each individual child.
We enable children to spend the vast majority of their time at nursery in free play. In free play, children are likely to be highly motivated and engaged, which are prime conditions for learning.
As early years educators, we join children in their free play and aim to extend their learning by employing strategies, such as:
- adding a new element to the play, such as an additional resource
- setting a challenge or increasing the level of challenge
- asking questions about the children’s play and encouraging them to think about their own thinking (meta-cognition)
- introducing new vocabulary
As such, we plan and deliver children’s next steps ‘in the moment’. Children live ‘in the moment’, so this approach makes learning more relevant to them, compared to advance planning. We allow the children to lead and we follow, trusting in their innate desire to learn.
We hold a group session at least once per day, which children are invited (but never obliged) to join. This builds a sense of community, through collective singing, sharing stories and so on. This also provides opportunities to share common themes, such as special occasions.
Supporting progress
Each week, we have a small number of ‘focus children’. At our team meeting, we share what we have observed about these children since their last focus week – this might include emerging interests, developing skills, new challenges and so on. We know that children do not develop in a linear fashion; we use these meetings to check that children are moving forward on their own meandering path.
Each child will have at least one focus week each term. Children with additional needs will have more frequent focus weeks. Where additional needs are identified, appropriate additional support will be provided.