3-5 year olds

We have two main playrooms for the 3 - 5 year olds, the Butterfly Room, Rainbow Room and K2 area, where we are engaging with the early years section of the Curriculum for Excellence.

The Curriculum for Excellence supports young people from the ages of 3 up to 18 years and establishes clear values, purposes and principles for education in Scotland. It sets out to enable young people to develop the following four capacities:

• successful learners
• confident individuals
• responsible citizens
• effective contributors

The early years are vitally important in providing the foundations for the development of these capacities. It is our role within the nursery to facilitate stimulating experiences and effective learning for the children through active play appropriate for each individual's needs.

Active learning is widely regarded as an appropriate way for children to develop vital skills, knowledge and a positive attitude to learning by engaging and challenging children's thinking. It takes full advanatage of the opportunities for learning presented by spontaneous play, planned purposeful play, investigating and exploring, events and life experiences and focused learning and teaching.

Children learn by doing, thinking, exploring and through quality interaction, intervention and relationships with staff. Children learn best in environments that offer differential play and challenge whilst supporting their hands-on independent play. Key strength identified by HMIe 'the supportive learning environment'.

The children's development in each of the four capacities is fully supported, and to give examples might be helpful -

The children develop as :

Successful learners through using their imagination and creativity, tackiling new experiences and learning from them, and developing important skills including numeracy and literacy through exploring and investigating whilst following their own interests.

Confident individuals  through succeeding in their activities, having the satisfaction of a task accomplished, learning about bouncing back from setbacks when things don't go according to plan and dealing safely with risk.

Responsible citizens  through encountering different ways of seeing the world, learning to share, take turns and give and take, learning to respect themselves and others and taking part in making decisions.

Effective contributors through playing together either in leading or supporting roles, tackling problems, extending communication skills, participating in sustained conversations and thoughts and respecting the opinions of others.

The ethos is about developing the whole person, and not simply about making sure they can write their name and tie their shoe laces any more!

In the words of Freidrich Froebel "Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child's soul".