Curriculum
Children are able to develop success in learning when they can relate to personal experience. The individual child’s experience is paramount when planning experiences as their understanding of conversations is at the literal level. Therefore, children learn best through play where they can develop at their own rate through interactions with people and objects. This way they will gradually increase their successes by being given appropriate amounts of time to develop and understand their world around them.
Program & practice
The curriculum at Blackwood Street Child Centre ensures children from birth to school age are involved in an educational program that is not only stimulating and engaging but also enhances children’s learning and development.
The curriculum recognises the significance of early childhood programs for children, and the diversity, experiences and relationships that shape children’s lives.
The curriculum invites educators to view children as capable learners who bring their own knowledge and experiences into the centre. Focus is placed on building on prior learning as well as providing opportunities to learn through play. The curriculum also highlights the important role our educators play as they work with both the children and families in making curriculum decisions using the early learning areas by interacting, planning, monitoring, assessing and reflecting.
The curriculum is accountable to legislative requirements including:
- Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010
- Education and Care Services National Regulations
- The National Quality Standard for Early Childhood Education and Care
- The Early Years Learning Framework
- Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines and
- Blackwood Street Child Centre Philosophy
Early learning areas are used to develop a balanced, integrated curriculum for young children. They also promote continuity and links with children’s learning and the early years learning framework. The learning areas include:
- Social and emotional competence.
- Health and physical wellbeing, particularly in making healthy choices and gross and fine motor development.
- Language development and communication, focusing on oral language and early literacy.
- Early mathematical understandings, with emphasis on early numeracy.
Social & emotional competence
Children will:
- Engage in a variety of roles, including listener, initiator, facilitator or negotiator when cooperating with others;
- Express ideas and feelings about what it means to be a friend;
- Celebrate and share successes and new learning;
- Carry out simple tasks and projects;
- Express their own needs, feelings and ideas and respond to other children and adults in a positive way;
- Compare similarities and differences between their own and others ideas and feelings;
- Explore and interact positively with peoples’ diversity through conversations, discussions, play and visits from the local community;
- Discuss and question bias and stereotyping with support through conversations, discussions and role play;
- Start to be able to learn independently;
- Take appropriate risks and compete new challenges; and
- Learn to cope with changes to routines, environments and people.
Health & Physical Wellbeing
Children will:
- Make choices in real life situations while maintaining their own safety and the safety of others;
- Cook and share healthy food, discuss healthy food choices and ways to stay healthy;
- Use songs and games to learn about their bodies and promote their health;
- Follow simple hygiene routines to help maintain their own health;
- Maintain health and wellbeing by participating in physical activity, resting, sleeping and eating healthy foods;
- Explore rocking sliding, rolling and swinging movements;
- Develop coordination including including hand-eye, foot-eye and upper and lower body movement;
- Develop sensory awareness through experimenting with movement;
- Participate in games including running, skipping jumping; and
- Participate in planning the layout of outdoor play experiences.
Language & Communication
Children will:
- Learn new vocabulary and extend language structures in a range of contexts;
- Discuss language and thinking in groups and as individuals;
- Discuss observations about other people using languages that sound and look different;
- Explore the rhythm and rhyme;
- Learn to follow and give simple instructions in games and play;
- Engage with and respond to a variety of written, visual and multimodal texts;
- Investigate the concepts of books and print during experiences with reading and writing;
- Use different types of texts for a range of personal and group purposes, including recipes, stories, information texts and song lists;
- Investigate a variety of books reflecting the diverse nature of children and families; and
- Include children and families ideas in planning for language and literacy experiences.
Mathematical Understandings
Children will:
- Explore numbers and number concepts;
- Match and describe patterns and objects;
- Sort and classify objects through experiences through number, shape, colour, texture and size;
- Make patterns of repeated sequences such as patterns and sequences in movement, songs, games, manipulative play, routines and stories;
- Create and use representation to organize, record and communicate mathematical ideas and concepts;
- Make predictions using patterns, language and symbols;
- Explore mathematical thinking and reasoning for decision making and problem solving;
- Explore concepts of more, less, long and short;
- Explores the concepts of empty, full, heavy and light;
- Use information to explore direction, order, sequence and pattern; and
- Provide babies and toddlers with resources that offer challenge, intrigue and surprise, support their investigations and share their enjoyment.
