At St Bernard's, we're proud to offer high-quality provision to children from the age of 2.

Planning Our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum

Our Nursery considers the all round development of your child. We provide opportunities which enable your child to; express ideas, reflect on experiences, share thoughts, make decisions, explore and engage in first-hand experiences.

Our curriculum is designed to be accessible for all children, regardless of any special educational need or disability. 

“Children learn by leading their own play, and by taking part in play which is guided by adults.” (Department for Education).

The EYFS curriculum covers all the critically important areas of learning and development for babies (from birth) up to children aged 5.

There are 7 key areas within the early years curriculum. These include 3 ‘prime’ areas which, in turn, interconnect and enhance the remaining four — each helping to improve the other.

Communication & Language- Prime area

In Nursery we spend lots of time developing children’s communication and language skills. We do this through various listening activities, singing nursery rhymes and other familiar songs and through talking to one another throughout the day.

We think it is really important to introduce children to new language and vocabulary. We encourage a language rich environment, developing our communication and language skills through play, carpet times and sharing stories together.

Physical Development- Prime area

It is important that we give children the opportunities to develop their physical skills. We give the children lots of time to do this in Nursery. We go outside every day – no matter what the weather is doing! We practise climbing on the climbing frame, jumping off of crates and catching a ball, amongst other things.

We also encourage the children to become independent in personal care. We encourage the children to put on their own coats and to zip them up. We also encourage them to use the bathroom independently and have lots of discussions about how we keep our bodies healthy.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development- Prime area

We think it is essential that your child feels happy and safe in their environment and therefore able to learn. We pride ourselves in ensuring that every child feels welcome and comfortable in our setting.

In Nursery, we talk about our emotions and discuss what can make us feel happy, sad, cross etc. We think it’s important to assure children that it is okay to have different emotions, and encourage them to express these emotions in appropriate ways.

One of the main foci in Nursery is to develop the children’s social skills. The children are encouraged to play with others and learn how to share and take turns with the toys. We play group games and turn-taking games that encourage this.

Literacy

At our school we want every child to have a love of reading, and that begins in Nursery. We have a focus story each week that we read every day to ensure the children become familiar with the story, the characters and the setting.

We begin our Phonics journey in Nursery, starting with learning some vital pre-reading skills. We do this on the carpet and in provision as we sing, use our voices in different ways and begin to segment and blend sounds.

We use Dough Disco and Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle to prepare our children for writing. These programmes help to develop children’s movement and muscles that are essential when using a pencil to write. When we are ready we practise writing the letters in our names.

Maths

In Nursery, we learn and explore what it means to sort objects in different ways, how to count things, and we talk about size and colour as we explore our environment and play games on the carpet. When learning to count we focus on the principles of counting that helps us to develop a deep knowledge of numbers.

Understanding the World

We value our time spent outside watching the changes in our environment. Gardening, watching how the trees change and observing the animals that visit our outdoor area helps us to gain an understanding of the natural world in which we live.

We also spend time learning about people that are different to us and learn about different celebrations from around the world.

Through our Religious Education we follow the Way, the Truth, the life and the children learn about God’s World and family, The church, New Life and Sorrow and Joy through stories and creative activities.

Expressive Arts & Design

In Nursery, we seek to develop our expressive skills through exploration and imagination. We encourage children to role-play different situations, giving them the freedom to explore their learning through using their imagination.

We understand the significance of each child having a different view of the world around them. We therefore encourage them to express themselves through different media such as paint, using a variety of materials and using digital media.

Please click on the links below to view our long-term plans for our 2-year-old provision and 3 and 4-year-old provision.