Curriculum
Summer 2024
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creative and Critical Thinking
These characteristics are encouraged, developed and supported to enable children to make progress in all areas of learning and development.
Encourage and facilitate opportunities to listen to each other, to take the time to model language and interact.
Encourage conversations in self-chosen play and snack time.
Encourage children to express thoughts and ideas as appropriate to 2 year old development.
Sing familiar Spring and Summer songs and share stories, and poems and share new words and language.
Encourage children to join 'Lift Off to Language' sessions.
Provide listening and attention moments within their spontaneous play and routines.
Support receptive understanding of simple instructions in their routines and play.
Draw and paint whilst developing details and representation.
Use a wide variety of mark-making tools.
Offer small world resources to enhance imaginative ideas linking to home environments.
Provide loose parts, so children can create their own small worlds.
Link their creative ideas to books and stories.
Ensure continuous provision of building materials.
Join in with singing songs and rhymes daily.
Play instruments with increasing control.
Provide regular yoga and dance sessions exploring different genres.
Read a wide range of late Spring/Summer stories to include an arrangement of selected core books that will enhance the children’s love of Summer themes and use props to deepen their storytelling and understanding.
Encourage caring for books and how to handle them.
Ensure books are everywhere in the learning environment and that non-fiction is used to explore the world.
Continue to encourage a love of books through the expansion of the books for home and our community library.
Ensure children have lots of opportunities to engage in meaningful and in the moment counting experiences in their play.
Use resources to encourage counting to 3, 5 then 10.
Take part in finger rhymes with numbers.
Compare amounts using language such as ‘lots, more, same’.
Provide a range of puzzles that are increasingly challenging.
Notice patterns in the environment and arrange things in patterns/categories etc.
Use simple language relating to size and weight: 'big/little/small' - 'heavy/light'.
Build with a range of resources.
Key worker to support separation and transition into the Saplings environment.
Give time to slowly and sensitively introduce routines and expectations as you observe children's starting points.
Select and use resources with growing independence and facilitate allowing self-chosen choices and develop a sense of responsibility.
Support playing alongside and beginning relationships with peers.
Support children to express their feelings and label them where appropriate.
To support children with their emerging independence and toileting.
Promote keeping healthy and looking after our bodies, including healthy food and dental hygiene.
Ensure outdoor play is available in all weathers.
Continue to provide opportunities to enhance coordination and stamina using bikes, scooters, and wheeled toys.
Provide the use of prams, balancing, climbing and swinging and involve the children in making obstacle courses.
Participate in activities that get the body moving and gradually gain more control over their bodies, making full use of the woodland landscape.
Continue to provide a continuous range of tools and equipment that develop the children’s fine motor skills appropriate for 2 year old development.
Provide activities that develop overall independence, co-ordination and self-confidence.
Observe changes to the garden through Forest School sessions, exploring Spring flowers, catkins and leaves, progressing to full Summer blooms and vegetable/herb growing.
Provide children with opportunities to nurture planting and growing and taste the produce.
Explore and collect natural materials and talk about what they see.
Provide opportunities for spontaneous listening walks in the Saplings/woodland garden.
Encourage children to share life experiences and build cultural capital.
Summer 2024
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creative and Critical Thinking
These characteristics are encouraged, developed and supported to enable children to make progress in all areas of learning and development.
Encourage children to express their thoughts and ideas across all areas of the learning environment.
Interact with children and talk about subjects that interest them in the moment.
Facilitate their communication style.
Encourage all forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal.
Support children with SEND to communicate using inclusive strategies.
Share new language and vocabulary to enhance language skills.
Continue 'Sail Into Sounds' sessions and continue to offer children 'Lift Off to Language' sessions.
Encourage children to participate in listening and attention games including listening walks, and sound discrimination.
Encourage children to draw, paint and explore different media and materials to create their own ideas and effects.
Encourage experimentation with tactile materials, paying attention to liquids, solids, malleable materials, floating and sinking.
Ensure continuous provision of imaginative resources to encourage imaginative interactions, thoughts and ideas.
Encourage movement and dance to a broad range of genres.
Play instruments, paying attention to rhythm and pitch.
Build and construct with blocks and construction materials.
Read a specific range of Spring/Summer stories that enhance a child’s understanding of the seasonal changes from Spring and Summer.
Ensure books are high quality (CLPE) and have rhythm and rhyme, strong key elements, storyline and illustrations.
Encourage all forms of rhyme through books, songs, poems and props.
Use non-fiction books to research topics and in the moment enquiries.
Ensure books are everywhere in the learning environment.
Continue to encourage a love of books through the expansion of the books for home and our community library.
Make a class book involving the children’s photos and emergent mark-making.
Ensure children have lots of opportunities to engage in meaningful counting experiences in their play.
Embed the five principles of counting into the learning environment both indoors and outside.
Enhance the provision of numerals and number lines and books for the children to access.
Provide meaningful opportunities to engage in mathematical role play with 1:1 counting opportunities, e.g. ice cream shop.
Provide lots of hands-on opportunities to encourage counting and number names from 1 to 20.
Provide activities that involve combining objects, developing early addition and subtraction.
Sing number songs and use props daily.
Embed a successful transition from Saplings moving into Nursery.
Develop a sense of responsibility for the environment through observing seasonal changes to the nursery garden from Spring into Summer.
Care for the wildlife.
Discuss ways to keep healthy and be independent in self care such as washing hands, brushing teeth and independence in toileting.
Promote healthy eating and snacks.
Spend time talking about feelings through circle time and stories.
Celebrate the children’s physical skills as they refine and master their movements.
Explore how children’s bodies change through exercise and introduce yoga and mindfulness.
Talk about keeping healthy and being active.
Talk about sun safety.
Use tools effectively to master their finer manipulation skills.
Encourage children to manoeuvre and build with large blocks to encourage strength and stamina to the upper body.
Encourage riding bicycles and scooters, paying attention to spatial awareness.
Encourage independence in putting on their own coats and attempting to fasten zips and taking shoes on and off.
Observe changes to the garden in Forest School sessions, observing Spring daffodils to Summer blooms.
Recognise new growth, planting vegetables.
Observe and talk about change as it appears by building new language and understanding.
Encourage children to make collections of natural materials.
Provide opportunities for listening walks, birds, traffic, people, etc.
Encourage children to explore how things work, such as everyday objects, fiddle box, remote controlled vehicles and programmes.
Encourage children to share life experiences and build cultural capital through shared experiences.