Children are all individual. Some children have begun to read at the age of three. Others are late bloomers, showing little interest in letters and words until much later, although as research has shown, most of these children catch up very quickly once they are ready to learn in this way.

At Active Learning, we don’t believe in hot housing children or forcing them to sit down for long periods and attempt work sheets for which many of the younger children are not ready.

It requires more imagination, but we believe in teaching many of the fundamental principles of literacy and numeracy through more age appropriate learning techniques which children find fun and therefore are more enthusiastic to learn. We believe in identifying a child’s individual talents and interests, and helping them to pursue those at the pace which matches his/her ability and interest.

What we aim to do is to cultivate a child’s natural desire for discovery and learning and to encourage them to be confident, independent and inquisitive in their work and games. For this is what is most important to the schools they will enter after their time at Active Learning, and what will help them most of all as they progress through their education and subsequent adult life. Children who are enjoying learning will always succeed.

Our curriculum is based on a combination of the Early Years standard curriculum, incorporating the best elements of Montessori, Pikler and Reggio methodologies, and the latest thinking from leading child care development research around the world. It is designed to help your child gain self confidence through being respected, and learning to respect his/her environment and peers.

We provide a curriculum that meets the Early Years curriculum requirements for under-3s and over-3s. The curriculum will help your child to develop an awareness and understanding of:

• Their own physical development
• Self awareness, self confidence and independence
• Self reliance and emotional awareness
• Social and group skills
• Interaction with different age groups from within the nursery
• Focus, attention and memory
• Language development and communication skills
• Numeracy and basic maths
• Literacy, the alphabet and reading
• Creativity
• Their environment and the world around them

Our focus is on a holistic education for children, integrating the standard nursery curriculum with fun and creative activities in our dedicated zones for:

• Active Music
• Active Dance
• Active Movement - physical education
• Active Drama
• Active Art
• Active IT
• Active Science and Discovery
• Active Senses – baby sensory room
• Sleep time – baby sleep room
• Active Play – two outside play areas (with a bicycle race track and traffic lights to learn about traffic safety) and an outdoor picnic area

Children all start their day in a dedicated home room (where they meet with all the children from their own age group) and then have the option to choose different activities in the Active Studios, meeting up again in their home rooms at different times of the day to register attendance, discuss activities, share information and socialise.

Because our children move from studio to studio, activities are designed to incorporate the Early Years goals and objectives in Active Performing Arts (Active Music, Active Dance, Active Drama), Active Art, Active Sports and Movement (gymnastics, yoga, martial arts, football, cricket and tennis), Active Science and Discovery, Active Technology, Active Senses, Active Babies and Active Toddlers.

Each child has a staff mentor who is responsible to ensure that educational and learning goals are met, monitor the child’s development and progress, and decide with the child, which activities they will pursue for the term. The mentor is responsible for pulling together information about the child’s day, and collating a summary of the child’s development, goals achieved, key skills learned, and needs term by term. They are also responsible for each child’s pastoral care. The mentor, along with the manager, is the point of contact for parents about their child’s education.

We use a common theme throughout the nursery which changes on a weekly / monthly basis depending upon the complexity of the theme.

The following illustrations cover typical days for babies and toddlers and 3-5 year olds. They illustrate the use of a number of themes across a range of activities. For this example we have chosen Mozart’s last opera, The Magic Flute (1791). The Magic Flute is a fairy tale opera which can be appreciated at a variety of different levels, and applied to a wide range of Early Years goals and activities. It is about a prince and his friend the birdcatcher, who are on a quest to rescue a princess from an evil priest (who actually turns out to be a good priest). They are helped by three ladies (servants of the Queen of the night), three boys (genies) and the animals of the forest.

In this example we use the Magic Flute as a theme to cover:

• Numbers (there is a mystical association with the number 3 throughout the opera, two acts, each aria is numbered, the different musical times of the numbers, etc.)
• Fairy tales and stories, folklore and legend (the opera is a fairy tale type story)
• Good and evil (characters are not always what they appear to be)
• Music (pitch, singing, rhythm, ensemble playing, classical forms, fast and slow, major and minor, although we also illustrate rhythms from jazz, blues and pop, instruments – Tamino, the prince’s magic flute, Papageno, the birdcatcher’s magic bells and the orchestra instruments)
• Dance (the animals dance to the flute playing of Tamino, the prince, and the children will perform a dance they will create and learn)
• Movement (improvisational movement to rhythms and tempos, using the body as an instrument)
• Science and discovery (there are trials for the prince to undergo which are of water and fire – we help the children to build a volcano and discuss fire, and to look at water in all its forms – liquid, solid and gas, waterfalls, rivers and oceans. We will talk about Egypt – where the drama takes place, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire – where Mozart lived)
• Animal life (Tamino’s flute playing brings out the animals from the forest – we look at animal life and the lifecycles of frogs and butterflies)
• Art (a number of artists have used the Magic flute for inspiration in painting including Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Marc Chagall)
• Self-awareness and social behaviour (Tamino must go through trials and learn about himself, good and evil to be accepted into Sarastro’s benevolent brotherhood. He has to help find the princess, learn to keep silent, take responsibility and help his friends.
• In art we look at the identification of self through self-portraits done by Rembrant, Dürer and Picasso, and get the children to produce their own self portraits showing different parts of their personalities. We will also discuss Mozart’s life as a prodigy, touring the Capitals of Europe and performing for the Heads of State when he was a child)
• Stars and planets (the Queen of the Night arrives on a moon from the stars. We’ll have a star show in the sensory room, and discuss planets, stars and moons)
• Geometry (the Magic Flute is set in Egypt and we look at triangles – pyramids – squares, rectangles, and circles
• Words, letters and meaning (Sarastro’s temples have wisdom, truth and beauty written on them – we look at the words, spelling and discuss what them mean)

Please see the Typical Day page to see how this programme is put together into specific activities for the children.