Thorburn Road, Wigan, Lancashire, WN5 9LW

School Office: 01942 222721

Early years centre: 01942 776628

enquiries@admin.saintcuthberts.wigan.sch.uk

St. Cuthbert's Catholic Primary School

With Jesus we love, learn and pray: to grow in the St. Cuthbert's way.

Welcome

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome all current and potential children and families to St Cuthbert's Early Years Centre, and thank you for your continued support.

 

Early Years Centre Telephone: 01942 776628

Our Vision

“Supporting and encouraging the children in our community to be happy and healthy, to feel safe and valued, to be kind to others, resilient, independent and curious, to be great communicators as they each reach their full potential through a love of learning that we embed through play so that they learn new skills every day.”

‘At St. Cuthbert’s Early Years Centre, we ensure that every child of all backgrounds and abilities receives high quality education and care that is dependable, compassionate and responsive, within a language rich environment, where they have a sense of belonging and respect, so that children and parents alike feel they have an extended supportive family where they can be their unique selves and make memories to last a lifetime’.

Our Aims

To ensure every child in our community has access to our well-planned environment both indoors and outdoors to ensure they receive high-quality inclusive early year’s education and care, so that they have an equal chance of success that they each deserve.

To provide high quality early years inclusive practice so that all children promptly receive any extra help they need due to living through difficult experiences or because of an identified special educational need or disability.

To guarantee that our high-quality care will be consistent, every practitioner enjoys spending time with their key children and each baby, toddler and young child thrives from this love and care, which is central to the thinking of each practitioner.

To support children as they make transitions during their early years, we understand that times of transition are very big steps for small children.

To offer an ambitious curriculum that is sequenced to help every child to follow their interests and develop their language and learning over time, through free play, with adults modelling, guiding and direct teaching in an enriched communication and language environment. Language development is a key skill to enable children to self-regulate and guide their actions and regulate their behaviour.

To ensure we offer depth in learning rather than to cover many things in a superficial way as we recognise that all children are powerful learners and make progress in their own time with the right help.

To implement effective assessment procedures so that all practitioners notice what children can do and find out what they know so that we have a clear understanding of what we want the children to know and be able to do next.

Our Values

Our Intent

Our curriculum evolves changes and builds from the baby room, toddler room and finally pre-school room so that the children learn how to self-regulate and be confident communicators, with good listening and attention skills.

Under 2’s baby room

'Through care, love and play our children learn new things every day.’

Our baby room practitioners understand that when a young baby joins our early years centre it may be their first experience of care outside of the home.  With this in mind practitioners, know how important it is to work co-operatively with parents to manage this transition.  Our highly qualified practitioners quickly develop strong and positive relationships with their key children and they build bonds with them to ensure each baby can thrive, as they develop self-assurance through feeling loved and being well cared for. Practitioners are responsive to each baby as they attempt to communicate, as they explore and play following their interests and it is only when the babies show how secure, happy and settled they are that the practitioners begin to implement ‘Physical Babies’ a holistic development programme specifically for babies. As babies do not develop in a fixed way, this programme offers depth in learning so that when differentiated it ensures that every child has the opportunity to make progress. The ‘Physical babies’ programme can be planned ahead but is also flexible and makes time for spontaneous learning. Through repetitive sensory activities that are carefully sequenced the babies begin to develop in all of the educational programmes and in our communication, rich environment practitioners know the importance of promoting early language skills to underpin future learning.    

Pre-school room

‘At the heart of our curriculum is a passion to develop early language development in an enriched communication and language environment. It supports our children to become effective communicators, who are able to listen, receive and process information and ideas and be capable of expressing their thoughts and feelings in a meaningful way to others through learning and play.’

In pre-school, our curriculum is progressive and sequenced in a communication rich environment and our intention is to start with what children know. Practitioners tune into the children’s interests and experiences learnt from their family and immediate environment and we build on this knowledge and provide activities that are new to the children.  It is ‘in the moment’ as we listen to our children’s voices, follow their interests and acknowledge the life experiences they each bring with them.  We are experts in differentiating activities so that they are suitable for every child.  We structure our curriculum so that the strengths of our setting and staff challenge stereotypical beliefs that some groups of children are ‘less able’ to learn and make progress than others.  We acknowledge that all children are unique and we celebrate all steps of progress that our children make.  We don’t overload the curriculum we use our book of the week to enhance certain parts of our continuous provision so that the children can take part in rich, challenging and open-ended activities linked to familiar stories. 

Two’s -Three’s toddler room

‘To support independence, listening and attention skills, develop language and understanding whilst encouraging each of our toddlers to communicate to the best of their ability as they play and learn, have a positive attitude, are involved, responsive and interested.’

In the toddler room highly, qualified practitioners build amazing bonds with their key children and understand that toddlers are learning to be independent. Our Early Language Lead Practitioners and Keys to Communication Champions understand that toddlers become frustrated if their peers or adults do not understand them; Therefore, we have ELKLAN strategies embedded so that all practitioners allow opportunities for everyone to talk, listen, understand and take part as early language development is promoted.  All adults help toddlers who are having tantrums to self-regulate by being calm and reassuring. Daily routines are flexible and allow the children’s learning to be driven by their interests.  Whilst in the toddler room the children will have their statutory check at two years old, this check is very important in identifying children who may need additional support, early identification of toddlers who are not making the best progress they are capable of is key to their future success at school.