A minis journey

At Minis, through our pedagogy, we strive to be the leader in providing outstanding and inspirational childcare, ensuring that children are embraced as individuals, with different care and educational needs.

We have ambitious expectations for all our children to thrive and meet their full potential.

Every child will go on a Minis Journey from their first day through to school, where our team of dedicated and committed nursery teachers will tailor our offer to meet each child’s individual needs. Ensuring through our close partnership with parents and strong key worker systems that we get to know every child deeply and can ensure they get the most out of every day and grow and learn with confidence.

We believe experiences are the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives and it is vitally important to get it right for all children, supporting every child to develop their full potential – academically, socially, emotionally and physically, enabling each child to grow in confidence, and be able to participate in the wider community.

We help all children to develop into active, resilient, confident, and independent learners who will move on through Minis and finally onto primary school with the knowledge, skills, characteristics, attitudes, and love of learning necessary to continue that learning throughout their lives.

The four key principles that guide a minis journey

Unique Child: Minis recognises that every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.

Positive Relationships: Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships. Minis values every family, developing strong partnerships which benefit the child as lifelong learners. Our keyworkers enable each child to be confident, cared about and safe.

Enabling Environment: Our children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time.

What will I Learn… Learning and Development: Minis considers the learning intentions for each activity, so our objective is clear. We consider each child’s interests and learning needs to ensure all children are motivated and engaged in their learning, differentiating our planning to meet the needs of all children.

We promote equality of opportunity and inclusion, providing early intervention for children who require additional support. We provide both child led and adult led activities every day. Children benefit from learning indoors and outdoors every day.

Our Pedagogy: Teaching Strategies at Minis

Quite simply put, pedagogy is the “how” of teaching. It is how we educate and support your children whilst at nursery.

We have a bespoke curriculum that incorporates the EYFS, the seven areas of learning, outdoor play and a unique “preparing for school” programme. Our learning model reflects our families and our local community so that all children get the best possible start.

We have a skilled team that use techniques and have strategies in place to ensure that we never miss a learning opportunity. We have enabling environments, with continuous provision that supports the children to access resources, make choices, lead their own learning and develop independence in the setting. Children in all rooms will have access to sand, water, sensory play, construction, small world, reading dens and a home corner, for children in the Tots room literacy, mathematics and IT also form part of their continuous provision.

Each day there will be adult led focus activities for both indoors and outside; with clear learning intentions.

Our planning will be differentiated to ensure all children are able to take part and benefit from the activity. The planning will also scaffold the children’s learning and knowledge to ensure that acquisition of knowledge and learning is secure and robust before moving on.

Our daily routine will include a circle time, which will develop and change as the children grow through the nursery.

Children are supported through regular and planned access to our sensory room.

We will also ensure independence is supported through the provision of self-serving at meal-times and snuffle stations.

We ensure we listen to the children, through their words and their actions, to ensure our environments are engaging, interesting and developmentally appropriate.

The Early years foundation stage and birth to five matters

As well as using our own bespoke curriculum to suit the individual needs of our children, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Birth to Five Matters. The EYFS sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well, are kept healthy and safe and ensure they have the knowledge and skills needed to go onto their new adventures at school. The EYFS sets out seven key areas for children’s learning and development as detailed below:

communication and language

The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development.

The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive.

physical

Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives.

Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility.

Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination, which is later linked to early literacy.

understanding of 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.

expressive arts and design

The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts.

mathematics

Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers.

By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures.