Learning and teaching, planning and assessment in the nursery are based on the national framework, A Curriculum for Excellence. Children are active learners, learning through investigating, experimenting, designing and making, exploring natural materials and above all through play. Children learn across all the subject areas of the curriculum: expressive arts, literacy and English, mathematics and numeracy, health and wellbeing, religious and moral education, social studies, science and technologies. Priority is given to creativity, innovation and the development of personal and social skills. The purposes, values, themes and outcomes of the curriculum closely reflect the child-centred, cross curricular philosophy which nursery education has followed for generations.
“The purpose of the curriculum at this early stage is to support children in all aspects of their emotional, social, cognitive and physical development. It should enable them to become increasingly independent, responsible and eager to progress in their learning. Staff in preschool education achieve this through their skilled interaction with each child and by providing stimulating contexts for active learning, building upon the child’s knowledge and skills and recognising his or her stage of development. They can build upon children’s enthusiasm, inventiveness and creativity to plan learning activities which combine to achieve this purpose.”
Stanwell Nursery School Edinburgh 