Foundation Stage Curriculum

Daisy Chain uses the early learning goals and their stepping stones to help us to trace each child's progress and to enable us to provide the right activities to help all of the children move towards achievement of these goals.

Personal, social and emotional development

This area of children's development covers:

• having a positive approach to learning and finding out about the world around them;
• having confidence in themselves and their ability to do things, and valuing their own achievements;
• being able to get on, work and make friendships with other people, both children and adults;
• becoming aware of - and being able to keep to - the rules which we all need to help us to look after ourselves, other people and our environment;
• being able to dress and undress themselves (outdoor clothes), and look after their personal hygiene needs; and
• Expecting to have their ways of doing things respected and to respect other people's ways of doing things.

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Communication language and literacy

This area of children's development covers:

• being able to converse confidently with individuals and to talk with and listen to others in small groups and in large groups;
• adding to their vocabulary by learning the meaning of - and being able to use - new words;
• being able to use words to describe their experiences;
• getting to know the sounds and letters which make up the words we use;
• listening to - and talking about - stories;
• knowing how to handle books and that they can be a source of stories and information;
• knowing the purposes for which we use writing; and
• Making their own attempts at writing.

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Mathematical development

This area of children's development covers:

• building up ideas about how many, how much, how far and how big;
• building up ideas about patterns, the shape of objects and parts of objects, and the amount of space taken up by objects;
• starting to understand that numbers help us to answer questions about how many, how much, how far and how big;
• building up ideas about how to use counting to find out how many; and
• being introduced to finding the result of adding more or taking away from the amount we already have.

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Knowledge and understanding of the world

This area of children's development covers:

• finding out about the natural world and how it works;
• finding out about the made world and how it works;
• learning how to choose - and use - the right tool for a task;
• learning about computers, how to use them and what they can help us to do;
• starting to put together ideas about past and present and the links between them;
• beginning to learn about their locality and its special features; and
• Learning about their own and other cultures.

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Physical development

This area of children's development covers:

• gaining control over the large movements which we can make with our arms, legs and bodies, so that they can run, jump, hop, skip, roll, climb, balance and lift;
• gaining control over the small movements we can make with our arms, wrists and hands, so that they can pick up and use objects, tools and materials; and
• Learning about the importance of - and how to look after - their bodies.

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Creative development

This area of children's development covers:

• using paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play to express their ideas and feelings; and
• Becoming interested in the way that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play can be used to express ideas and feelings.

Play helps young children to learn and develop through doing and talking, which research has shown to be the means by which young children think. Daisy Chain uses the early learning goals and their stepping stones to plan and provide a range of play activities which help children to make progress in each of the areas of learning and development. In some of these activities children decide how they will use the activity and, in others, an adult takes the lead in helping the children to take part in the activity.

In all activities information from the early learning goals and stepping stones has been used to decide what equipment to provide and how to provide it.

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