Activities

Curriculum

Children begin to learn and explore the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by Harvard Park continues to help develop this curiosity by providing our children with engaging and interesting activities which are appropriate for their ages and stages of development.

We use the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to help us reach those important milestones for children and to also identify any area's which may need a little extra work or attention. This document can help you in helping us to ensure we are working together to help get the best from and for your child while at Harvard Park.

Additional Programs and Activities
We currently run Forest School at both of our settings. Forest School is a holistic approach which is child-led and promotes independence. At Harvard Park we run Forest school sessions for a 6 week program which is developed and adjusted to the children's individual needs and learning styles. We use these sessions in support of school readiness and encourage the exploration of nature in our local environment. If you would like to find out more information about Forest School, you can visit this website: https://forestschoolassociation.org/what-is-forest-school/.

We also use special education tools such as PALS - a learning program which stands for Playing and Learning to Socialise, Box of feelings and structured visits to an offsite gym (day nursery only) and phonics to help our children get the very most out of their time with us at Harvard Park. We are also currently beginning to role out the use of yoga during our nursery sessions which can be conducted in and round the settings and be adjusted accordingly. Similar to forest School, these educational tools and activities are run for 6 weeks at a time with small groups of children so they can gain the most out of their new learning and experiences all while being supported by our early years educators.

We use strategies such as song boards and story bags with props to help develop language in both young children and those who may have English as an additional language. This too will develop counting skills, We encourage mark making from a very young age with a use of tools such as paintbrushes, hands, crayon and pencils. When a child is ready to make the next step to letter formation, we assist them with this too. However, we never pressure a child into doing an activity the do not want to do.

We promote creative development in a number of ways such as occupational role play, puppets, junk modelling, music and movement, mirror play and through everyday role play. This helps our children to make friends, learn to share and also to be independent in the choices they chose to make and in their day to day routines.

We use an online system for tracker your child's development

We have made the transition to go paperless within the last few years. We have great and positive feedback from parents who enjoy seeing what their child gets up to at nursery on a weekly basis. We work alongside the company to help develop new features and things which we think are helpful to the children and staff of Harvard Park. We do ask for input from parents and carers to help support their children with their development as well to help our families feeling included and seen in our settings. We promote the use of family albums in both Pre-School and Day Nursery too.

More information can be found on our active Facebook Page

If you are looking for more information about the activities we provide or are interested to see what we get up to on a monthly basis, head over to our Facebook Page where you can find updated photo albums from each setting, notifications and notices as well as reminders and things to do! Simply click or tap the Facebook Icon at the bottom of our screen and you will soon be re-directed.