The Happy Stars Curriculum

Curriculum Overview

At Happy stars we come together to support the children to build their foundations/first steps required to promote confident and independent children.

The first 5 years of a child’s life are the most important and it is crucial children are provided with a safe, welcoming environment with ample opportunity to explore, learn, investigate and question without prejudice or worry.

By following ‘In The Moment Planning’ alongside the EYFS and the seven areas of learning;

Personal, Social and Emotional
Communication and Language
Physical
Mathematics
Literacy
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

The child will actively self-select their area of learning of where they wish to participate. Building on their own confidence and self-esteem, promoting a can do attitude with determination. Our goal is to encourage this through their play, as well as providing opportunities for the children to show case their new found independence and skills. With the end goal being ready for their transition into school.

Our Intent

Happy Stars believe children learn best when trusted to carry out their ideas and play with every day resources they may not get the chance to at home, usually copying/mimicking what they may see adults do at home. Whilst supervised by adults, children are then learning skills such as;

Preparing their own snack
Learning to dress themselves,
Learning about their own emotions as well as their peers,
Team building,
Deepening their communication skills
Creating strong friendships

In turn, this builds on the child’s confidence and ability through repetitive play, they are learning continuously how to improve their own skill set and problem solving skills.
We believe these are vital skills children benefit from on their journey throughout school life. These skills also reflect later into adulthood.

How We Implement Our Curriculum

We promote this through both Adult-Led activities and Child-Led play.

Using ‘In The Moment Planning’, we allow the children to lead their own learning, this in turn benefits and boost the children’s development, confidence, as well as promotes independence.
We provide opportunities throughout the children’s play, following the EYFS (Early Years Framework), a key person will observe their key child, find out their interest in the moment, and using this to inform their teaching and planning for each individual child.

Our staff will fill out an activity sheet, based upon what their children are currently interested in. This will consist of three activities;

A crafting activity
A group activity
A one to one activity.

This will ensure all children are involved in what our topic is of the week as well as incorporating skills such as team building, communication as well as their own independence.

Each child has their own tapestry account including folder in which their key person will make termly observations to track their progress. This helps us to identify where the child may need additional support and help towards planning their next steps. All individualised and tailored to the child’s preferences.