Our curriculum is a ‘flexible’ guidance that is specifically focused on the children and families that attend our setting and our environment and community.

We feel that it is imperative that we have a flexible approach to our curriculum and that as professional practitioners we confidently use our professional knowledge and creativity to adapt, change and add to our curriculum as and when necessary. We know that all children are unique and that they learn and develop at different rates and in many different ways. One cohort of children will be different to the next and this is why we place emphasis on the importance of allowing our curriculum to be a flexible and adaptable working guidance, that can be changed and enhanced at any point to support teaching and learning to the highest quality.

Managers, leaders and practitioners along with input from parents and carers, have developed our curriculum with the use of Government guidance and frameworks and sector publications. (see below for further information).

Our environment and community plays a huge part in what we offer. We know what we have here at Huckleberry’s and in our community and we know what we can provide. We use this to our advantage and see ourselves as extremely lucky to have such a wonderful community and environment surrounded by our own forest school grounds and a footpath facing our nursery entrance that leads us onto the beach with just a two-minute walk. We will never take our facilities for granted.

Additionally, one of our curricula aims is to teach and learn outside of what we have here at Huckleberry’s and to explore beyond our beautiful rural community. Our aim is to teach children to recognise and celebrate culture and diversity within and beyond our community. We aim to excite children to celebrate our British values and multicultural and we place emphasis on the importance of acknowledging and learning about our ‘British Values’ teaching our children and families to understand and give regard to; Democracy, Rule of Law, Individual Liberty and Respect.

Being a ‘typically’ monoculture setting it is important that our children explore and learn about life beyond what we have here and beyond what they already know. We encourage all children and families with any individual need or disability and from every nationality, race, religion, and cultural background, to come and join our nursery family.

We encourage all of our families to share their individual celebrations and traditions and allow us to celebrate them with you. This also supports us in teaching children different ways of life and to learn diversity and to acknowledge and pay interest to others ways of life. We rely on parents and carers to work with us as partners to give input to our curriculum and what we teach and explore, knowing that parents/carers are a child ‘first’ educator and know their child better than anyone else.

One of the strengths of having a flexible curriculum is that it supports spontaneous and, in the moment, learning and planning. We want our children to take ownership of what they ‘want’ to learn. This way learning will be deeper and more meaningful. To enable children to do this we provide open-ended opportunities of learning, provocations, and resources in our rich and stimulation environment.

Along with our individual values our curriculum is influenced by Government and sector guidance on what children need to explore and learn to enable them to have the best start in life with the best education that supports them in reaching adult life being strong, independent and resilient learners that value and respect the peers and community.