Understanding the world..
THE EARLY YEARS OBJECTIVES ARE:
PAST AND PRESENT
PEOPLE,CULTURE AND COMMUNITIES
THE NATURAL WORLD
Past and Present
Our children are outside in all weathers, all year round, so they get to see, feel, smell and hear many changes as we experience the seasons first hand.
The Great British weather offers so many learning opportunities, by adapting clothing suitable to the climate, walking on crunchy leaves in the Autumn and in muddy squelchy puddles during the Winter. Seeing and smelling bluebells in Spring and Elder flower in the Summer and hearing the sounds of the birds singing and the squirrels scurrying offers a huge variety of past and present experiences. .
We collect fallen leaves in the Autumn to make leaf mould and once the earthworms warm up, we get our compost bins fully loaded so we can grow crops and flowers in the warmer months. We feed our plants with our saved rain water, on dry days.
Changes in the climate and weather influence many changes to our Fauna and flora which we experience on a daily basis.
People, Culture and Communities
We encourage our children to learn, respect and develop positive and caring attitudes with in our own community and the outside world.
We share the celebration of annual festivals with the children to broaden their awareness of diversity. We create crafts or cook relative foods to represent Diwali , Chinese New Year, Easter and Christmas. We use World Book Day and International Mud Day as a way of allowing children to express themselves, explore and understand the world around them.
We have regular visitors from the wider community, so the children get to interact with people from different back grounds. We have visits from Bee Keepers, Tree Surgeons, Fire fighters and Surrey Wild Life Trust, to name a few.
Combining all of the above our children have fun learning about other cultures, they cook and taste different foods, they experience meeting different people and this gives them a great start in life.
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The Natural World
Our children walk to base camp, exploring the woodland and collecting sticks and leaves as they go. They are surrounded by a variety of ancient trees and then they find themselves in an open green space, where they see cattle grazing and this is a great time to grab some wild garlic and forage for blackberries. Once they get to base camp they create art using their finds, paint pictures with mud or wild garlic , using sticks as paint brushes. We make journey sticks, so the children can tell stories about their day.
We make fires using our collected sticks and we have great fun cooking our finds.
We have quiet moments where our children will sit by a chosen tree, or chill in a hammock or lie on the ground and listen to their surroundings and look above and see how the canopies change from one season to another.
The children create mud pies , some of which are watery and wobbly and are piled high with sticks and then disappear into the ground whereas others are made with a tougher texture and less water and will stand independently, despite also being decorated with sticks and leaves.
Once we have explored, we ensure we have collected any litter and we leave no trace.