All children at Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries are encouraged to learn through play. Our Curriculum covers all the key areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage and is designed to meet the needs of each individual child.

We follow the Government’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework which sets the standards for learning, development, and care for children from birth up to 5 years of age.

The principles which guide the work of our Early Years Professionals are grouped into four themes:

A unique child – every child is a competent leaner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self assured

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

Enabling Environments – the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning

Learning and Development – children develop and learn in different ways and at different times; all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.

There are three prime areas of learning in which our Early Years Professionals support children to learn and develop. These are:

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Communication and language
• Physical development

Plus four specific areas of learning. These are:

• Knowledge and understanding of the world
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Expressive arts and design

Each child has their own key person to enable them to feel reassured, safe and cared for within our setting. This person also keeps a detailed Learning Journey of the child’s progress during their time with us. These records are available to be viewed and discussed at any time by parents, who are always encouraged to add details of their child’s experiences from outside the nursery.

Baby Room

Baby room is all about care and nurturing and giving a good start to those early attachments which is so important. Every baby is assigned a key worker who follows a routine which forms a balance between home and nursery environment. The baby room is fully equipped with toys and equipment that are designed to promote those early learning skills such as hand eye coordination and balance. We have a range of stimulating toys and interactive displays that are used to create a home away from home feeling and this draws on their inquisitive nature helping them to develop their senses. Parents are encouraged to make and share treasure baskets which aid towards a heuristic play in the baby room providing them opportunities to fill and empty, slotting together, building and balancing, selecting and discarding and finally recognising differences and similarities.

Whilst our baby babies are busy getting themselves equipped with all the basic skills they need our older babies are getting ready to move into a new zone – Toddler room – We call our older babies tweenies and they have activities specifically tailored around their growing interests towards speech and language, walking and growing independence. All these tailored activities with help of their keyworker help them to transit into our toddler room.

Toddler Room

Our Toddler Room which focuses on child’s interests, strengths, needs and developmental ages and stages. We use the Early Years Learning Framework in a play based environment to meet learning outcomes. Our experiences are designed to meet the needs of the whole group, small groups and individual children. We believe parent’s play an integral role in their child’s life and learning, therefore information provided to us combined with observations taken by educators makes up our program.

Preschool Room

Research shows that the transition between preschool and school as a very important milestone for a child and we therefore have a very structured school readiness program operating in our preschool room. Our program is based on our own studies but also help from the local authority and teachers from local schools. The curriculum is geared towards:

• Building confidence
• Forming strong interpersonal skills
• Allowing Independence
• Acceptance of nursery values and rules which given them a good start in the outside world
• Ability to express themselves through drama, movement, music, and expressive art and design
• Creating concepts for early maths and literacy skills
• Becoming keen observers and make a focused analysis and expand imagination by thinking out of the box

Within the Preschool room we have two groups: ‘’Ready for school group’’ and ‘’On the road to school group’’

Ready for school group: They start school in September and have activities tailored around the needs for them. Parents have opportunity to attend ‘Ready For School Workshops’ which starts from March and as a team we work together to make the transition as specific to each child as possible.

On the road to school group: They start school following September but have activities and planned programs to support them to gradually start moving into ‘Ready for school group’.

Nursery will be working with parents at every stage to ensure that we have right strategies equipped to ensure the children are ready.

If you have any specific questions about the curriculum, please get in touch with our manager, who will be happy to answer any questions.