Teaching and learning at Enchanted Wood Preschool centres around the individual child; what they love and what motivates them to learn. The expert delivery of rich, engaging, meaningful activities, purposeful play, and focused high-quality teachable moments, provides real opportunities for children’s natural curiosity to be enhanced, for individual learning to be challenged and extended, and secures solid foundations for life-long learning.

The best for every child

At Enchanted Wood Preschool we endeavour to give all children an excellent starting point and understand every child deserves to have an equal chance of success. This will be delivered through a high-quality curriculum that is age appropriate and exposes children to a range of new ideas and experiences. The curriculum will be inclusive and enable children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) extra help they need, so they can progress well in their learning and development.

High-quality care

We want the child’s experiences at preschool to be central to the thinking of the child’s keyworker, keyworker buddy and every practitioner in their room. We want all babies, toddlers, and young children to feel loved and cared for, and thrive in the nursery environment. We prepare all children to learn to be independent and break down every outcome into small steps of learning, so they are ready for the next stage.

The curriculum: what we want children to learn

Our curriculum is a top-level plan of everything we want the children to learn over the year. The curriculum is ambitious, with careful sequencing which will help children to build their learning over time, covering all seven areas of learning and development.

Language development is at the heart of everything we do, using children’s interests to drive curiosity in topics and introduce new ideas and themes they may not have ever experienced. We understand that not all children develop in the same way or order, so having flexibility in the planning to revisit learning objectives or switch between ages and stages to ensure learning is secure.

We follow the Developmental Matters tracking system to monitor and track children’s progress. There are two age groups; Birth to Three, and 3-4 year olds. The two groups may overlap slightly and there is flexibility to move in between curriculum plans to meet the individual needs of the child. For example, a child with additional needs may need to work between both of these age groups and staff may design a more bespoke personalised curriculum so that child can achieve their best.

The Developmental Matters isn’t used a tick list, the skills in each area are carefully planned for and embedded in all activities and learning opportunities over the week.

Birth to Three

Bunnies- Phase 1
Rabbits- Phase 2

Three to Four Year Olds

Hedgehogs- Phase 3
Owls- Phase 4

Pedagogy: helping children to learn

We understand children are powerful learners, and we use a mix of different approaches to aid them with this, such as learning independently through play; by adults modelling the task; by children observing each other; and through guided learning and direct teaching know as ‘adult-led activities.’

We believe our classroom environment is our third teacher and design it to be not only functional but also beautiful and reflective of the child’s learning. We want the relationship between the staff, the child, and the environment to ignite new learning opportunities.

Understanding ‘how’ children learn is observed using the Characteristics of Effective Learning: Playing & Exploring; Active Learning; and Creating & Critically Thinking.

Assessment: checking what children have learnt

The children keyworker (and keyworker buddy) will make observations of the children during their sessions through ‘Look, Listen and Note’ techniques. We will use this knowledge to make accurate assessments of what the child can do now and allows staff to plan possible lines of development.

Each week your child’s keyworker will complete the Learning Journey and track children through photos, observations and link to the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. Over the year staff will monitor and track their progress to ensure there are no gaps in learning and development.

These learning journey documents are paper based and stored onsite as working documents- these will be shared with you on a termly basis at Parent Review Meetings.

Self-regulation and Executive Function

A child’s brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to three- producing 700 new neural connections every second, known as synapses. This growing brain development is influenced by many factors, including a child’s relationships, experiences, and environment. Developing this executive function supports the child’s ability to:

- hold information in mind
- focus their attention
- regulate their behaviour
- plan what to do next

These abilities contribute to the child’s growing ability to self-regulate:
- focus their thinking
- monitor what they are doing and adapt
- regulate strong feelings
- be patient for what they want
- bounce back when things get difficult.

Brains of young children are ‘lit up’ to their maximum when they initiate their own play, in an enabling environment, supported by a skilful adult. In child-initiated play children are at their deepest levels of learning and discovery, therefore making the maximum amount of progress.

Our aim is to constantly stimulate this Brain Development as it is key to language development- enabling children by the age of five years old to have a vocabulary of 3000-5000 words.

Partnership with parents

We want to create a generation of happy, confident learners. As your child’s first teacher, we want you to be fully involved in the next step of their journey. These early interactions have had an enormous impact on their lives so far, so it’s important to share what is working well (or maybe not so well) at home with us too.

When children first join us, we use an ‘All About Me’ form to gather information about their families, favourite toys and activities and any personal information such as medical needs, allergies, or additional needs. These will help staff get to know the children well and help them settle into their new routine.

We aim to give feedback daily on the door about their day and key events, and further deeper ‘Parent Development Reviews’ each term. We will discuss the child’s progress in each of the seven areas of the curriculum and whether they are working at ‘expected level of achievement,’ or if working slightly ‘below expected level of achievement’ how we are going to support any difficulties or gaps in learning.

Each term we will send home a Parent Views sheet so you can add to your children’s learning journey. This can be a photo of a recent day out or activity they enjoyed, or information about a new skill they have learnt at home such as sleeping in their bed for the first time or potty training.

We hold Development Reviews at 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old, and link these with the review checks from your child’s Health Visitor to support children to reach their milestones. Any children working with other professionals such as Speech and Language, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapist or Educational Psychologists will also have their reports embedded in the development journey to ensure every child makes the best possible progress.

We like to keep you involved with preschool news through our Parent WhatsApp groups, Parent Admin portal and Termly Newsletters and Dates for your Diary.

Throughout the year we plan lots of further opportunities to be involved in your child’s experience at preschool and invite you to join us for Stay & Play sessions, festivals and special events.

If you have any further questions, please talk to your site manager or your child’s keyworker.