Our aim is to ensure that all children leave us capable, strong, resilient, and confident. We achieve this by employing well qualified staff and with a low ratio of children to adults to ensure that children can spend quality time with the teachers. 

The Image of The Child - Children are viewed as competent, curious, natural researchers who are full of knowledge, potential and interested in connecting to the world around them. 

Each child is unique and has experienced so much in their life. This means that every child views every moment differently. It is our job to ‘tune in’ to each child so we can discover the best way to support them in their development. 

The Role of Families - We recognise the fact that a child’s family are their first educators. Families are invited to take active roles in contributing to the processes of discovery and learning. We aim to build relationships based on co-operation and mutual respect through regular meetings with families to keep them up to date with what we have been doing at Burford Preschool CIC.  We share successes and discuss what we have been learning at the setting and at home via the ClassDojo and face-to-face meetings.  We encourage parents to share with us via the ClassDojo the child's moments from home so that these can be shared and celebrated with their peers at Preschool.  

Playing and Exploring Outdoors - Children’s sense of balance, touch and well-being are all nurtured by unhurried outdoor experiences. We believe children should have access to the outdoor area from the moment they arrive and therefore the back door is open from 9.10 am so that children can go straight outside almost immediately after arriving at Preschool.  We understand that some children prefer to be outside exploring whist others prefer to play inside.  Our free flow system allows children to make the choice where they want to play and what they want to play with.  

Documentation - Your child’s Key Person will keep up to date records of your child’s learning and development at Burford Preschool CIC. We used Development Matters and Shropshire’s Communication and Language Screening Tool, to ensure that children are making progress and not falling behind.  Learning Journeys will be shared with you on a regular basis.  Photographic moments are shared with parents via the ClassDojo at the end of each day that your child attend Preschool.

Teachers as Partners - At Burford Preschool CIC, the adults play and work together in partnership with the children. We follow on from the children’s starting points and interests to create provocations and invitations to learn to encourage our children to explore and learn.  

Core Values

Our practices and attitudes are underpinned by these six core values:

Respect                       Respect for children, parents, and each other.

Positivity                    We aim to ensure that Preschool is a positive environment for children, parents, and our team members.  

Quality                       We aim to provide the highest quality experience, environment and relationships for children, parents, and our team members.

Uniqueness                We strive to maintain and develop our unique qualities. 

Achievements            We aim to foster in each and every child a love of learning, an enquiring mind and desire to discover. 

Professionalism    We aim to develop a highly professional team through in house training and ongoing professional development and motivation, in the pursuit of excellence. 

The Curiosity Approach

During the summer holidays 2022, we decided to take small steps, inspired byThe Curiosity Approachto improve our environment to make it calming, exciting, engaging and stimulating.  The Curiosity Approach takes its inspiration from various progressive education theories including Montessori, Stenier, Te Whariki and Reggio - which focuses on self-directed and experimental learning. 

To enable us to continue to make positive improvements to our Preschool environment, which in turn will help us to improve how we guide our children to develop and learn, we have enrolled with The Curiosity Approach for Accreditation! This means we will spend a minimum of 12 months, following their guidance and implementing more and more positive improvements to our environment, our resources, and positivity within our Team!

We have been working hard already at changing our environment layout and swapping some of our plastic resources to more authentic and natural resources and loose parts.  We have so much more to do, but we cannot wait to see where this journey takes us…we know it’s going to be fantastic!

As a team, we are investigating and reflecting on different ways of inviting our children to play and learn as we support them in their first years.   We are seeking to create awe and wonder for our children to spark their curious minds.


Planning in the Moment

We have also implemented ‘planning in the moment’ as this goes hand in hand with The Curiosity Approach. Staff have completed training for Planning in the Moment so that it can help us carry out observations effectively and accurately. We are no longer forward planning set topics or themes, as we will now plan as we go, branching off children’s interests and what is happening in that moment as they play and explore. The seasons and events that are associated with the seasons, will be featured as invitations to learn.   

Planning in the moment encourages:

Excitement
Problem Solving and Questioning
Curiosity and Wonder
Individuality and Confidence
Positive Attitudes

By planning in the moment, we focus on responding to the children in the very moment. Not tomorrow…not next week…but right now. By focusing on what is happening in that moment and scaffolding the children’s learning is what is called a ‘teachable moment’. We as educators are working together as a team to recognise these moments and act upon them, furthering the children’s thoughts, learning, and involvement. Instead of writing down lots of planning before the day, we are now recording the teachable moments, the WOW moments, and the outcomes achieved after the magic has happened!  These will all be linked to the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021) and Development Matters (2021).

Since following ‘planning in the moment’ from the beginning of September 2022, we have begun to see huge changes - positive changes! Our children are getting experiences and moments they usually would have had to wait for, happening right there and then…as they should be.  We have also seen a positive change in behaviour, improvements in children’s communication skills, and learning through play happening more and more.

These teachable moments are observed and sent via the child’s profile on the ClassDojo.