At Westwood, child-initiated learning is at the heart of our practise and is embedded in every aspect of our learning environment. We believe children learn best through active engagement with the world around them and through meaningful and relevant experiences supported by responsive adults.

Therefore, we recognise that the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children's learning and use continuous provision to support this. Skilful adults observe children's play and plan around children's interests and smart steps, enriching the provision as well as adding enhancements to continuous provision in response. We believe self-initiated learning and exploration are key ingredients to having independent children who are motivated to learn.

Outdoor Play

We believe that outdoor learning is fundamental to children's development and recognise the benefits of outdoor play in developing confidence, communication, collaboration, physical development and recognise the importance for children to experience nature. Children therefore have daily free-flow access to the outdoor continuous provision. The free-flow nature allows children the opportunity to follow their interests and move their learning indoors and outdoors. Children have weekly sessions in our Woodland every other half-term. Our Woodland sessions allow children the opportunity to develop their exploratory play whilst investigating the natural world around them.