Statutory guidance – what we have to teach
Understanding the World: Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.
Our children begin their journey focussed on their knowledge of themselves and their familiar world. Children are naturally explorative and investigative and when immersed in a stimulating and inviting environment they naturally begin to explore and find out more about the world around them. At Whitegate we pride ourselves in providing a naturally stimulating learning environment that brings out a child’s curiosity and adventure and creates a drive to find out more.
Who am I and how do I connect/fit in? We know how important familiar people are to young children and this is a key focus of our curriculum. We provide our children with opportunities to explore the people closest to them, including a deeper awareness of themselves and what it is like to be an individual in their local and wider communities.
How can I care for the natural environment? In order to become citizens who make informed choices about how to look after our world, we need to give children lots of opportunities to explore different environments. Our children often have limited experience of the world around them, only travelling from home to Nursery or to the shops. Their knowledge often stems from television or the internet. We believe that children need to be hands on with their natural environment to be able to fully experience it and develop a deep and well-rounded knowledge of how the world around them works, from where they live to living things, seasons and change. We provide a highly stimulating learning environment both indoors and out, exploring growth and change through planting and exploring lifecycles, our bodies and what they need to be healthy, and other aspects directly linked to our children’s specific needs and try to give them the opportunities to explore activities and places they may not have access to outside of Nursery School.
How do I affect the world around me? Our children are naturally inquisitive and learn best by being hands on with the world around them. Children need to be given the opportunity to explore how things work in their own way, using cause and effect and their previous knowledge to discover how materials react in different ways depending on how you manipulate them. We encourage our children to be investigative and provide a range of opportunities to allow them to work out exactly how the world around them works. Our children also need to have an understanding of the natural forces at work, such as the weather. Long term, we want our children to turn into adults who understand the consequences their actions have and how they can make different choices to make a positive change. Exploring modes of transport and looking at litter and recycling exposes our children to their responsibility as they grow to take care of their world.
By the end of their journey we would like our children to have developed a fascination and sense of wonder about themselves and the world around them. They will have a deeper understand of what it means to be them and how their lives may be similar or different to others. We aim to provide our children with the skills and knowledge to explore their familiar and wider world with confidence and a desire to find out more. The children will have developed key investigative skills and language. We hope they will continue to explore and question and that their love and interest in the world around them continues to blossom and grow.
