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Personal, Emotional and Social Development at Hilltoppers Nursery.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development Policy.

Nursery Curriculum Overarching Principles.

Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident, and self-assured.

Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.

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.

Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.

Across all areas of the curriculum 3 characteristics of effective learning are key.

Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.

Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements.

Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

What is PSED in the Foundation Stage?

Our Personal Social and Emotional Development (PSED) curriculum supports children to have a positive sense of themselves, respect for others, social skills, emotional well-being, and a positive disposition to learning. These are all crucial life skills which will support our children on their educational journey and enable them to be “school ready.”

We believe that a child’s Personal, Social and Emotional development is fundamental to their ability to access the wider curriculum and is a crucial component in their development as well rounded and successful individuals and members of society. Together with parents we work on encouraging children to value themselves, respect difference in others and develop effective skills in communicating their thoughts and feelings. Nursery works as a partner with parents in continuing the social and emotional development of children that starts in the home. Our environment provides new challenges for children and we work hard to ensure that through child initiated play, an enabling environment and high quality interactions their personal, social and emotional wellbeing is promoted.

How we teach this in the Nursery

Making relationships

For children, being special to someone and well cared for is vital. Children with warm affectionate relationships with their parents are more likely to feel safe and secure, have confidence, self-esteem, be positive about others, be socially adjusted and achieve.

In Nursery we work with parents to develop effective relationships from the start of your child’s time in the setting- inviting you to settling in sessions and asking you to share information about your child’s needs and interests. Your child will be allocated a key worker who will be responsible for your child’s care and educational development.

We are a small nursery, so all staff get to know your child and have opportunities to develop secure relationships with them. This helps your child to feel valued and cared for and supports them to settle and flourish in the setting. There are many opportunities during the day for children of all ages to spend quality time with key adults playing, singing and sharing stories.

 

Self-confidence and self-awareness

Children who feel good about themselves develop confidence to try new things and to cope with not being able to do something or get things right. They are more likely to persevere and try again. Developing these skills help children do well in school.

Children with low self-esteem feel unsure of themselves and may give up too quickly or not try something new at all. They may find it difficult to cope if they make mistakes, lose or fail, and as a result, not do so well at school.

Therefore, we work with children to model “having a go” at new activities and support them through any difficulties developing perseverance and coping strategies.

Children of all ages freely access play resources helping to encourage their independence and ability to choose for themselves.

 

Managing feelings and behaviour

We provide a nurturing environment with consistent daily routines such as snack time and circle time. This helps children to feel safe and understand the structure of their day. Understanding what is coming next helps to reduce anxiety.

Children who are encouraged to express their feelings can develop strategies to cope with new, challenging or stressful situations. Displays of emotions, such as tantrums, screaming and tears are common in the early years, particularly for those children under 3 years. We encourage children to express how they are feeling so that we can model how to manage feelings and emotions. Staff use conflict resolution to support children in learning how to deal with issues between their peers. Adults support self-regulation through modelling and sharing techniques with children.

 

Health and wellbeing

Children’s health is a key part of their PSED. Being physically healthy is not just about having nutritious food and being a healthy weight. It also includes having:

a clean and safe environment; stability; appropriate clothing; healthcare, including dental care; mental stimulation; access to the outdoors and loving relationships.

At Nursery we teach children how to care for themselves e.g., handwashing, nose wiping, putting outdoor clothing on etc. We love to be active and spend time in the outdoors. We are developing our outside areas so that they become more of a natural environment for our children.

Planning for PSED

Planning for PSED is devised in line with the EYFS Statutory Framework, with reference to Development Matters, Birth to 5 Matters and from observation and assessment of children’s needs.

It includes;

The Nursery’s annual programme of 6 termly themes which demonstrates how areas of the EYFS framework are broken down and woven through other areas.

Continuous Provision Planning.

Termly plan.

Weekly planning – seen on our assessment board and weekly planning board. These build upon children’s interests and next steps.

 

Support for each child.

We believe every child can succeed. Provision will be made to meet the individual requirements of children with any additional needs, to enable them to make progress in their Personal, Social and Emotional development and achieve their full potential, eg through specific targets as part of an Individual Support Plan.

Staff will liaise and work closely with parents and other professionals involved with the child and respond to the advice they offer.

Where necessary, resources and equipment to support children with additional needs will be procured from other agencies.

 

Observation, Assessment, Monitoring and Record-Keeping

Children’s skills and stages of development are observed and monitored by keyworkers. Observations may be long or short and supported by evidence such as annotated photographs or pieces of work when possible.

Observations and records inform planning, identify next steps for each child, may identify a learning difficulty or talent, and provide the nursery with the means to monitor cohort progress and collect data on the effectiveness of the provision.

Records of individual children’s progress and achievement will be shared via our new Famly app.

When a child is aged between two and three, practitioners will review their progress, and provide parents and/or carers with a short-written summary of their child’s development in the prime areas.

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