Hatching Dragons

Toddler Education Programme

Our toddler programme builds on the foundations laid in our baby programme - the work undertaken in communication and language, physical development and personal, social and emotional development should see our children confident, capable and communicative sufficient for them to start exploring the more academic areas of the EYFS: that of numeracy, literacy, understanding the world and arts and expressive design...

Curating Cultural Capital

Annual Curriculum

With our toddlers, we start to introduce a little more structure to the routine to help build their comfort around small introductions of adult led programmes in and around literacy and numeracy. It also offers us the opportunity to start timetabling more exciting outings to help our children develop a greater sense of the wider community and society that they live in. And there couldn't be better locations than our schools in the heart of the city to show our children how society functions and what roles people have in helping us live and work together

Our Education

Intercultural Nursery Education

My Immediate Environment

Our toddlers have established a sense of self and a secure base and foundation with their families, key group and key workers within their first year with us. Now, we start to introduce them to the immediate environment and society in which they live to introduce them to the people who make our cities work. We look at the seasons and changes, the rural landscape and, of course, the city scapes...

And we couldn't be situated better to show them this world - being in the heart of the City gives us direct access to hospitals, cathedrals, places of worship, large office blocks, military barracks, museums and monuments and so much more to help the children develop their sense of where they live and what makes it all tick!

January New Beginnings

New Year. A New Start

In January, it's a time for renewal and rebirth. We celebrate the turning of the year with a nursery celebration that helps our children understand the passing of the old, the passing of time and the excitement that the new year can bring. We look forward to the changing of the seasons to bring the Spring and renewal

February Family

Our Families

We look into our families - who they are, how big they are, where they are, and share our knowledge of our cultures with our friends. It helps build our awareness of cultural diversity and interest in the wider world...

March Spring

Spring, Easter & Passover

As the winter recedes, the landscape changes and we start to see the flowering buds of Spring. We talk to the children about natures cycle and how rebirth begins as the winter draws to a close...celebrated by easter, passover and other festivals of the spring equinox

April Occupations

People who Help

As part of our investigation into the people and communities in which we live, and given that we're in the heart of the city, we investigate the different jobs and occupations our parents, family and friends have to better understand how cities function...

May Farming

Agricultural Awareness

We think it's hugely important for our children to know where food comes from and how important it is we care for the earth. We will sow seeds, learn to water and grow our own vegetables and we may well visit a farm or two!

June Seaside

Under the Sea

In preparation for our holiday period, we're going to look at the seaside and what can be found there - from star fish to limpets, sand dunes and the sea. We're going to look at all things aquatic and maybe take a trip to the London Aquarium...

July Holiday

Places We've Been

Talking about our holidays and learning where we are going to and what it might hold for us is a hugely important step in helping the children understand distance, difference and diversity. We look at what holidays are, where we can go and what we will do whilst we're there...

August City

Loving London

It wouldn't be right to have a programme about our immediate environment without looking into the wonderful sights and sounds our city has to offer. And given we're in the middle of it, we can walk out, and see these spaces on our doorstep

September Autumn

Harvest Time

We've looked at farmers and what they need to do to make the food we get to eat, and we've sown our seeds in the spring to see our vegetables grow to fruition. It's now the time to pick and celebrate what the land provides for us...

October Transport

Things that Move!

We like things that move - trucks and trains, cars and carriages; bikes and boats...we do a deep dive into all of our transport, underground, overground on water, under water and on the roads to help us get to where we need to get to...

November Space

The Great Beyond

As the nights draw in and as bonfire night approaches, we'll be spending some time looking at the sparkles in the night sky. And so we think our children should spend some time thinking about what's out there beyond the stars...

December Winter

The Deep Freeze

It's the build up to the Christmas holidays and we try to get into the festive spirit by making decorations, wrapping up warm and understanding how the winter solstice is the end of the year before things are reborn into the new...

Cultural Capital

International Observances. Cultural Festivals...

We've partnered with Global Dimension to help build out our international observances and event calendar for cultural festivals and parties throughout the year....

Book our Cultural Festivals

Book an Open Evening

Westminster Parent

“The school throws Paediatric First Aid training every term for the parents for free. And a party once a month at least on the cultural programme is awesome for the kids"

Dianne

Westminster Community

Preschool Curriculum

The Importance of Routine

Our flexible routine allows our teachers to adapt the sessions to fit the needs of the children - we don't stop children from engaging in their activities if they're engaged, but rather use the circle times that introduce each activity block to introduce the theme for the week, and to discuss what we may have learnt in our previous activity block so we can plan how to take the learning further in different avenues....and then we watch the magic happen!

Download the Routine

Early Years Foundation Stage

Teaching & Learning Outcomes

We believe in what we do and want to make you a promise as to what levels of development your child will achieve across all of the 7 areas and sub-aspects of learning that Ofsted require of us...

Listening, Attention & Understanding

At the end of their time in our toddler class, your child should be able to both listen and understand simple instructions in both languages and remain focussed and concentrating on specific tasks and activities that they have self-generated in our academic programme. They respond readily to their names and are aware of the names of their friends and the routines of the room, and our expectations of their behaviour - self regulation is beginning to manifest

Speaking

Towards the end of their time in our Blue Dragons programme, your child should be able to speak around 200-500 words confidently in both languages (depending on time spent in our language enrichment programme). They will be frequently asking questions about the names of objects and concepts as their vocabularies rapidly expand. They will be linking up to 5 words together in simple sentences and have good recall of image to word in our Makaton and talking time games

Self-Regulation

Our values based pedagogy in circle time is most important at this crucial stage - your child will begin to be able to partially verbalise their desires and needs, but not fully, which can lead to frustration and behavioural outbursts. The focus of our work in this stage is to help children understand and accept these feelings but to contextualise them in empathy as to how they might feel if those same feelings were directed towards them. Circle time is all important, as is our mindfulness class

Managing Self

Your toddlers confidence is emerging and they are happy to engage in new activities independently, albeit with the support of their key worker near by. Their knowledge of and ability to manage risk still requires a steady hand and vigilance on behalf of the key worker but they are more keen to try and reach the limit of their abilities (sometimes with no small amount of frustration!) Our job is to help them overcome the bump and seek satisfaction in seeing a job well done

Building Relationships

Your child is slowly beginning to establish close bonds with their key group in the school. Circle time is our time to share and talk through our feelings and behaviour and why we need to learn to consider the needs of others as well as our own if we are to be a happy member of a supportive community. Sharing is still a challenge - the sense of possession isn't particularly easy to shift even with adults but with calm, consistent reassurance and reminders of our values, we get there

Motor Controls

Your child is beginning to grasp pencils and pens in a cursive manner, making marks and being able to control and direct the mark making well. They have developed the ability to sit up, stand and walk confidently, although hopping, skipping and jumping are still emerging in our sports class and playground time. Risk is still not fully understood and so we do need continued vigilance in helping them understand what is safe and what can pose a risk in their choice of activities

Comprehension

Your child will be listening intently to story time, Makaton and picture books, asking simple questions about what is happening in our stories. They will be able to finish simple sentences by understanding the context and intuiting from the pictures the situation described. They begin to grasp that images and shape can have meaning from the Chinese calligraphy we do through to the letters and sounds we start to introduce toward the end of their time in toddlers

Reading

Your child will be a regular visitor of our library corner, independently selecting picture books that stimulate their curiosity. They will ask simple questions about concepts and imagery they don't understand and will start to recite calligraphs and meaning from imagery and flash cards used to scaffold their knowledge of image to word. We start to introduce simple letters from the alphabet in talking time and letters and sounds towards the end of their time in toddlers

Writing

Your toddler will enjoy mark making as an activity, closely linked to arts, crafts and self-expression as it is. As we introduce letters and sounds during our literacy classes, your child will start to practice the formation of letters in the alphabet in our cursive writing sheets, using dot to dots and other resources to encourage knowledge of the shape, form and sound of the letter

Numbers

Your toddler will be aware of weight differentials and volume differentials in our cookery club, and can start to subitise quantities during our simple numeracy programmes that encourage number counting and the removal of items from the child's sight. We are not at the stage of numeral recognition but our counting songs and rhymes are building knowledge of the words so we have the foundation to start basic computation in preschool

Numerical Patterns

Our number patterns are established in our songs and rhyme time with our toddler class. Simple songs that encourage counting and subtraction are used by the team to build awareness of less and more in counting structures, and the use of abacus and beads and coding blocks helps develop the sense of pattern structures we use through to preschool

Spatial and Temporal Awareness

The toddlers concept of time is not particularly established - yesterday, today and tomorrow are introduced as the routines for the school become slightly more structured. Tidy Up time and key transitions in the room's routine help build the child's awareness of structure and we start to introduce the concept of time, and the passing of time, in the context of our day before introducing the numerical structures of time in preschool next year

People & Communities

The focus of our cultural programme with the toddlers is to introduce them to their immediate environment - the United Kingdom, London in particular, and the people within it, what they do and how they help us. We talk about our families and cultural traditions within the key group and introduce key religious themes that we learn to respect and discuss in circle time

Natural World

Our outing times have encouraged us to plant seeds in our gardening corner and learn to water the plants to watch them grow. We've attended a farm in one of our outings to understand agriculture and how food is made and have learnt how food is made in our cookery club. Our animals are the animals of the home and the farm before we embark on a journey of understanding the wider world in preschool

Creativity

Our arts and crafts programme has seen the children maximise their creative expression, using the mixed media and materials within our art corner. We've made patchworks of textiles and learnt to dance and sing in our music class and have developed an awareness of the different textures of the materials within our school

Toddler Education Programme

Annual Curriculum