The curiosity approach is a holistic pedagogy taking inspiration from many different approached including Reggio, Motessori, Steiner and Hygge. It focuses on the importance of the environment and how creating a stimulating, calm and inviting atmospheres results in creative, independent learners with a love of learning.

By creating intriguing ‘invitations to play’ children are curious about what they are learning and naturally want to know more, this in turn helps them to retain what they are learning at a deeper level. By using authentic ‘real’ and familiar  resources they have experienced, it enables them to apply what they are learning to real life situations. Using real life hands on resources, children will have more opportunities to recognise and consolidate ideas learnt in school in their day to day lives and stops them seeing school and home as such different places. It also focuses on creating high quality learning and interactions with adults and their peers. We have seen higher engagement with activities, Children settle faster due to the ‘home from home’ feel and children communicate more with each other as they have to be more creative to build resources with loose parts using representational play.

The approach can be split in to three key areas : The learning environment, authentic resources and open ended resources. By using open ended loose parts rather than set plastic toys, children are able to develop a much stronger imagination and problem solving which they are able to apply to all areas of their learning. Children look closer at items noticing the natural qualities of the comparing them to the item they would like to be e.g. if a child is using loose parts to represent food, they are already thinking about the size, shape and texture of the gems and often find long pine cones to represent carrots or sausages and will collect green items to be veg and red for apples they are subconsciously forced to explore all the qualities of an item and assess how well is meet their play needs. Studies have shown that if children cannot make these connections into representational play before age 5 they may never be able to do it. So its important to give children as many opportunities as possible to be imaginative and notice the similarities between items and shapes.

The accreditation has six modules:

1.Environment

2.Open ended resources

3.Invitations to play

4.High expectations

5.Senses

6. Story telling

We are currently on module 5 – senses. We are looking at how light and shadow can be manipulated to enhance areas and activities and create a cosy spots and snugs. We are looking at different scents and sounds that can be incorporated into the indoor and outdoor environments which should flow into each other.