Our Approach – Halesowen Day Nursery

Nursery Care

Learning and Development

Our pedagogy is based on a variety of early years approaches which allow us to provide a child-centred, holistic environment for our children. These include but are not limited to:

The Reggio Emilia Approach
The Curiosity Approach
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Bowlby and Ainsowrth’s Attachment Theory
The Thrive Approach
Emotion Coaching

We are also inspired and guided by many other theorists and inspirational thinkers such as: Froebel, Montessori, Vygotsky and Piaget whose work underpins our current understanding of the early years.
The key ethos which encompasses all of these approaches and has historically and continues to be our main inspiration is the Reggio Emilia Approach.

The Reggio Emilia Approach

We see children as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative and inventive individuals who possess a desire to interact and communicate with others. A main focus of the ethos is to acknowledge the environment as the 3rd teacher – something that we hold very strong in our practice. We view our role as to organise and make accessible environments that are open-ended and rich in possibility and opportunity and that invite the children to embark upon extended exploration.

Parents As Partners

Here, parents are seen and valued as the first educators of their children and we acknowledge the importance of including them in nursery life and having consistency between nursery and home as much as possible. We operate a general ‘open door’ policy to promote positive relationships and communication. We also have an open offer for stay & play sessions, regular parent evenings, parent workshops and social & family events to support our strong parent partnerships.

Learning and Development

The Early Years Foundation Stage

The Early Years Foundation Stage is the core document given by the Department for Education (DfE) to those who care for and educate children from birth to 5 years old. The following statement from the EYFS explains the motivations of the framework.

“Children are born ready, able and eager to learn. They actively reach out to interact with other people, and in the world around them. However, healthy learning and development is not an automatic process. It depends on each unique child having opportunities to interact in positive relationships and enabling environments”

EYFS, 2021

Planning activities and learning

We use the seven areas of learning laid out in the EYFS to plan exciting and stimulating invitations to learning for your children while in our care. Children learn best through play, and are most motivated when able to follow their own interests and achieve their goals. The staff have high expectations for all children and facilitate this by scaffolding children’s learning to challenge them and help them meet their developmental milestones. Activities include, sand, water, mud, nature discovery, planting, role play, singing, instruments, cooking, socialising, listening to & telling stories, heuristic play, treasure baskets, arts & crafts, dressing up, painting, drawing, play-dough, clay, sleep & rest, climbing, physical play, small world play, puzzles, counting, constructing, mark making and much much more.

At the start of every child’s journey at Halesowen Day Nursery, we create a profile for them on our online learning journal system ‘Famly’, which we use to record their individual developments and achievements. These are noted and shared with you and your child and create their own ‘journey’. These recordings can come at any given time and from a variety of sources such as: observations, spontaneous ‘wow’ moment notes, your parental voice and the voice of the child themselves. This is then used as a monitoring and assessment tool which enables our early years educators to provide ‘next steps’ for your child and informs our planning of activities and the environments and experiences your child will have next.

Special Educational Needs & Disabilities

Here at Halesowen Day Nursery, we have a designated SENCO who, alongside colleagues/key carers, holds responsibility for identifying, managing and supporting a child’s additional needs. Relevant information is shared and discussed at your welcome meeting to ensure that we are able to cater for your child’s all-round development. IEP’s and care plans are put in place and we will work with outside agencies when necessary to enable the best activities and environment for your child’s progression.