Nursery Curriculum - Tudhoe Moor Nursery School

Whilst in Nursery the children are working within the Foundation Stage and follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum.

The EYFS seeks to provide:

quality and consistency in all early years settings, so that every child makes good progress and no child gets left behind.

We will keep you up to date with your child’s progress through parent meetings, conversations, written reports and photographs through an online system called Tapestry. Our high quality curriculum ensures that all children are exposed to new experiences and to develop skills that they will need to succeed in later life. Staff closely monitor their key children to ensure they are making expected progress. If we feel that your child is not making enough progress, extra support is put in place to help them. After this, hopefully your child will have caught up, but if not, we would have a conversation to update you and to come up with a plan to further support your child.

a secure foundation through planning for the learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly

Our curriculum has been carefully planned out and designed by our staff with our specific community in mind. We pride ourselves on knowing our children extremely well and being able to change and adapt our curriculum according to the needs of them as and when they arise. We try to broaden children’s knowledge and experiences but largely develop their communication and language skills. Our staff assess children continuously and change planning accordingly to meet their needs. Every activity in nursery has a focus and a purpose for being there. We use lots of creative resources so feel free to ask our staff why we have picked specific activities and what learning we hope will take place!

partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers

You know your child best! We are in such a privileged position to have been chosen by you to look after your child- and we want to do our very best! We hold lots of special parent events including stay and plays, concerts, bedtime stories, sports’ day and much more. Your child will have an allocated key worker who is your child’s closest staff member. It is this staff member who will chat to you at pickup and drop off and more formally meet you for parent’s evenings and complete written reports. You’ll also find some photos of your child posted on Tapestry. You can also post your own photos and videos so we can see what your child has been up to at the weekend. You might find that photos only appear once a week or less and wonder if we could send any more. Unfortunately not- we’re too busy engaging with your child, having conversations, extending their learning and getting to know them. We don’t want a tablet to get in the way of that bond!

equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported

We are a highly inclusive and welcoming setting to children and families. Our school is based in Spennymoor, where the majority of pupils are White British. Our carefully designed curriculum ensures that children are aware and exposed to other cultures, celebrations and can celebrate our similarities and differences. Check out our equalities page to find out our current statistics.

What Is A High Quality Nursery Education?

It is about much more than just learning numbers and letters.
It is about developing the whole child – learning to be confident, sociable, independent and inquisitive. It is about having a positive attitude and forming positive relationships.
What your child learns at Nursery will build upon the experiences they have already gained at home. Young children learn by watching and doing, by exploring and investigating, by listening and speaking, by creating and experimenting.
If children learn to “have a go” they can learn from their mistakes and not be afraid to try again.
The education we provide is based on a philosophy of play and active learning. Play is children’s work and playing hard is very tiring.
We observe and assess each child carefully and record their overall development.

All aspects of children’s growth and development are woven together but they can be separated into 7 different areas of learning. These areas are consistent with the Early Learning Goals within the Early Years Foundation Stage for 0 to 5 year olds. The 7 areas are split into 3 prime areas (these underpin everything we do in Nursery) and 4 specific areas (these help to strengthen the prime areas).

These seven areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. We make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a bit like a curriculum in Primary and Secondary schools, but it’s suitable for very young children, and it’s designed to be really flexible so that we can follow your child’s unique needs and interests.

Children at Nursery will learn by playing and exploring, being active and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside.

Please have a look at our full Curriculum for more information.

You can also check out other documents linked to our curriculum here:

Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND)

At Tudhoe Moor Nursery we believe that inclusive education means providing all pupils with appropriate education and support alongside their peers. The Curriculum is all the planned activities that the school organises in order to promote learning, personal growth and development. Further information can be found in the SEN Information Report

If you have any questions about SEND please contact the school and we will try our best to help you.