In Scotland our National curriculum for Education – The Curriculum for Excellence -spans the ages of 3-18. At present, our children are entitled to a free nursery place from the age of 3, and so children in Milngavie Early Years Centre are aged 3, 4 and 5. We work on the Early Level of the Curriculum.
The Early Level spans 3 years of education – 2 nursery years and all of Primary 1. Mapping out our children’s educational progress is done by comparing their experiences and abilities with the “Experiences and Outcomes” of the Early Level. There are 8 curricular areas:
- Expressive arts.
- Health and wellbeing.
- Languages.
- Mathematics.
- Religious and moral education.
- Sciences.
- Social studies.
- Technologies.
Each area has it’s own Experiences and Outcomes and we work towards these through play-based learning. Young children learn best when allowed to follow their interests and learn in the context of their play. It is our job to make learning exciting and memorable and we do this by observing our children’s interests and reflecting them in the environment we set up. Trying new and exciting things is highly encouraged, and our skilled staff are trained to interact in a way that is supportive, but that encourages independence and resilience. We have a strong ethos of nurture at Milngavie EYC- the building of the fundamental self confidence needed to learn is recognised as key. We work hard to make sure all our children settle and feel secure and happy and this facilitates their confidence to learn.
Parents have a huge role to play in the learning their child experiences in nursery. By informing the nursery of your child’s preferences, their interests and what makes them happy, we can help your child settle quickly and tailor the learning to their interests. By feeding back to us, either in comments on your child’s learning journal, or even just at pick up or drop off about how your child feels about things they are learning, or giving suggestions for new learning by telling us what they are loving doing at home really helps us in our aim to Get It Right For Every Child.
The following links will take you to the documents we use for the Early Level – The Experiences and Outcomes, and The Benchmarks. The benchmarks are a more detailed exploration of the route we take to achieving the Experiences and Outcomes – a breakdown of the skills involved. We use these to map our children’s progress. When reading them, please bear in mind that we aim to achieve this level by the start of Primary 2. It is a three year journey.
Experiences and Outcomes:
https://education.gov.scot/documents/All-experiencesoutcomes18.pdf
Benchmarks:
https://education.gov.scot/nih/Documents/EarlyLevelBenchmarksAllAreas_.pdf
Should you have any questions about the curriculum – how it is delivered in our centre or how it relates to your wee one, please feel free to speak to Kate Cameron, our Nursery Teacher. You can phone her at nursery – 0141-955-2251 or email her at KCameron@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk.
