Our approach
At Bloomfield we believe that young children best learn social, cognitive and physical skills through play. We provide structure to this play in a free and relaxed environment. To us, each child is an individual, with unique strengths and needs. We base our care on our own professional knowledge and experience, but also on what you as parents tell us, on what your child tells us, and on what we learn as our knowledge and understanding of your child deepens from day to day…
Bloomfield has a careful progression of activities and development which takes place in the following rooms:
The Welly Boot room provides play and activities which are simple but stimulating for children from 2yrs to 2.5years of age
The Sunflower room offers a combination of learning through play-based activities for children from 2 to 3 years
The Watering Can and Flower Pot rooms focus on a play-based approach for children from 3 to 5 years in our .
At all stages, the emphasis will be on activities that engage and interest your child in a fun way. The pace of these activities will be individually geared to your child’s stage of development at any given time.
Aistear is the curriculum framework for children from birth to 6 years in Ireland. It provides information for adults to help them plan for and provide enjoyable and challenging experiences so that all children can grow and develop as competent and confident learners within loving relationships with others.
Aistear celebrates early childhood as a time of being, and of enjoying and learning from experiences as they unfold. It is underpinned by 12 interconnecting principles presented in 3 groups:
Children and their lives in early childhood
Children’s connections with others
How children learn and develop
The framework uses the following interconnectedly to describe children’s learning and development:
Well-being
Identity and Belonging
Communicating
Exploring and Thinking.
They describe what children learn—the dispositions, attitudes and values, skills, knowledge, and understanding. Each one includes aims and broad learning goals for all children. The aims and goals outline the dispositions, values and attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that the adult nurtures in children to help them learn and develop.
The National Quality Framework, known as Síolta, is a set of national quality standards for early childhood education. Síolta is a quality assurance programme that enhances the quality of early childhood experiences for children aged from birth to six years. The Department of Education and Skills, the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education (CECDE) developed Síolta in consultation with the early year’s sector.
The Síolta Framework was published in 2006, following a three-year developmental process, which involved consultation with more than fifty diverse organisations. These organisations represented childcare workers, teachers, policy makers, parents, researchers and other interested parties.
Síolta has been designed to define, assess and support the improvement of quality across all areas of practice in early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings where children from birth to six years are present.
