“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious”                (Stephen Hawking)

At Grace Cook Nursery children learn within a safe and secure learning environment that equips them for the educational journey ahead. We ensure children are given a range of highly-engaging and enjoyable play-based learning experiences which enable them to become confident and independent learners. We endeavour to offer a curriculum that is based on real life experiences, involves the child and most importantly is planned through careful assessment of their needs and interests.

At Grace Cook Nursery ‘The Foundation Stage Framework and Development Matters ‘are the basis of our Early Years curriculum. The curriculum is split into seven areas of Learning, with three Prime areas and four Specific areas: please see the table below:

Here at Grace Cook Nursery we have adopted the “Curiosity Approach” to learning in our Nursery setting to inspire and nurture curiosity in every child. Your child will experience and learn through the use of natural, authentic resources in the learning environment to enrich and ignite your child to use their imagination and curiosity to learn in their own unique way. The approach focuses around the idea of teaching children ‘how to think’ rather than ‘what to think’. We provide children with natural resources and ‘loose parts’ that can be turned in to a multitude of things during play, rather than resources that have only one sole purpose. At Grace Cook Nursery we offer a learning environment which supports the “Curiosity Approach” the magic, wonder and possibilities of the resources on offer, inviting children to become curious about the world around them.

Moon Room

If your child is aged 2 – 3 years old learning is planned in response to your child’s interests and individual schemas. A Key Person approach is adopted for the care and development of our younger children. A practitioner will work closely with your child, on a day to day basis. Your child’s key person will be observing, planning and creating an enriched programme of events to foster their learning, through our continuous provision. Our younger children will be supported and encouraged to join in with our carpet/ story/song time and there will be a designated rest area should your child still require a nap during the day .The Nursery team will continually monitor and adapt the provision to accommodate the needs of all our children including our very youngest ones.

Star Room

Our older children’s learning happens in “Star Room” at Grace Cook Nursery. Our 3- 4 year olds have their learning and development based around a different book each week.  Each term we will look at a particular theme and around that theme we will focus our work around books connected to the theme. There will be adult led tasks during the day alongside independent learning.  We come together at certain times of the day for carpet time, where we might extend our learning on as a group. Here too children’s interests will be catered for and incorporated in to the environment.

Having all our children together in one learning environment creates a  sense of  community for our children who then grow to become fully respectful of one another’s needs.  They learn to share, to be kind, to help each other and work together as a team and have an appreciation for one another.

Wrap Around Care

Our Star room is also used to provide our wrap around care.  We have our extended provision of care in Star room our breakfast and afternoon club.  Here continuous provision is set up for our children taking extended hours. We have our snacks and lunch and tea in Star room too. So our children are very familiar with both rooms at Grace Cook Nursery and learn how to transition between the two facilities with confidence and ease which makes good practice for transitioning when they go to school.