Teaching

Curriculum

At Dolphin Day Nursery we offer a varied curriculum based on the ‘new’ Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). This standard is new for September 2014 and is therefore now in place at the setting. We plan the curriculum around your child’s interests and observations and provide learning experiences both indoors and out.

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
  • A secure foundation through learning and development opportunities which are planned around the needs and interests of each child and are assessed and reviewed regularly
  • Partnership (working between practitioners and with parents or carers)
  • Equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported
  • The Learning and Development requirements cover: The areas of Learning and Development, The Early Learning Goal and, Assessment Arrangements

There are four principles within the Early Years Settings:

  • Unique children
  • Positive relationships
  • Enabling environments
  • Children developing and learning at different rates

We aim to plan for your child through three characteristics of effective teaching and learning, namely:

  • Playing and exploring
  • Active learning
  • Creating and thinking critically

We do this through the four specific areas of Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World, and Expressive Arts and Design.

Monitoring Progress – Eylog:

Here at Dolphin Day Nursery we have implemented a system known as Eylog, which is an integrated inline and mobile application which easily captures and securely manages the learning journey of each child in an electronic format. Compliant with the new EYFS requirements, the system allows us to observe, assess, and plan your child’s progress. We are able to create a comprehensive EYFS profile of your child in the nursery, associate observations with relevant learning goals and plan the next steps to achieve the key learning aspects across all the EYFS learning areas. As each new observation is created, we are able to share this with you in real time by emailing copies of the photos, video or speech for you to see whereever you are! The overall learning journey is created from the observations and assessment and the PDF version is then emailed and printed at the end of the year for you to keep as a permanent record of your child’s progress.

We love this new system and we are sure you will too!

Key Workers

The transition from home to nursery can be a big step for children of all ages, but the transition is made that much easier with the help of a key worker. Your child will be allocated a key worker as soon as he or she joins the nursery. The role of the key worker is not only to care for and provide reassurance to the child during the settling in period, but also to foster a close, caring relationship that will continue throughout their time at Dolphin Day Nursery.

Parents usually tell us that they also benefit from the key worker system. They find it helpful to have a regular point of contact for any questions, concerns, or just to pass on information about their child. The key workers are encouraged to be open, honest and to keep parents informed and involved at all times.

Keyworkers are also responsible for ensuring the progress of each child is correctly logged (using Elog) and supervising their overall development.

SEN

At Dolphin Day Nursery we're proud of our work with caring for children who have Special Educational Needs. In conjunction with external agencies, we have shown to have a successful record of working with children who require extra support and maximising their development as they reach school age. The requirements for each child are as unique as the child themselves, but we have an experienced team here at Dolphins who are able to take on this role and offer this additional support.