Our Bear-Rilliant Curriculum & Teaching
what is our curriculum and how do we teach it?
We aim for every child to make great progress during their time at Bonnie Bear Day Care and to graduate with what we refer to as the "Bonnie Bear Backpack" This backpack symbolises the knowledge and skills we aspire for each child to acquire throughout their journey with us, preparing them for independence as they transition to school. Our objective is for our partner schools to specifically recognise a Bonnie Bear Child, acknowledging the positive experiences, skills and lessons ingrained in their development along the way.
At Bonnie Bear Day Care, we place each child at the heart of our practice. We carefully consider their individual needs, interests, and stage of development through our bespoke curriculum, planning, observations, and assessments, ensuring learning is personalised, purposeful, and enables all children to make strong and sustained progress.
We consider the different ways in which each individual child learns using the EYFS and the characteristics of effective learning.
Playing and exploring
Active learning
Creating and thinking critically
Intent and Our Curriculum
Our intent is for every child to leave Bonnie Bear Day Care with their very own “Bonnie Bear Back Pack”—a strong foundation of knowledge, skills, and behaviours that we nurture and develop throughout their journey with us.
This “Back Pack” equips children to become confident, independent, and resilient learners, ready for the next stage of their education and life beyond nursery. We achieve this through our cyclical curriculum, where learning is revisited, built upon, and embedded over time, ensuring children develop secure understanding and make meaningful progress.
Implementation and Teaching
Our highly skilled practitioners implement the curriculum through a carefully structured concept-led approach, which ensures children develop deep, meaningful understanding rather than surface-level knowledge.
Concept-led planning allows practitioners to focus on big ideas—such as change, relationships, or cause and effect—enabling children to make connections across different areas of learning. This supports children to think critically, solve problems, and apply their knowledge in new situations, rather than simply recalling isolated facts.
By revisiting concepts over time and in different contexts, children are given opportunities to embed learning into their long-term memory. Practitioners skilfully adapt experiences based on children’s interests and developmental stages, ensuring learning is both purposeful and engaging.
Impact and Achievement
We monitor the impact of our curriculum and planning through ongoing observations and assessments. This enables practitioners to reflect critically on their practice and identify where teaching and learning can be enhanced or adapted. As a result, we ensure our curriculum remains ambitious, responsive, and effective in meeting the needs of all children.
Practitioners use assessment to inform clear next steps for each individual child, ensuring developmental milestones are being supported and that children are developmentally prepared to progress confidently through the setting. Our approach ensures learning is purposeful, personalised, and builds on what children already know and can do.
We employ a dedicated, commissioned SENCo who works out of ratio to provide targeted support. Where appropriate, we work closely with external agencies to ensure timely and effective interventions are put in place. This collaborative approach ensures all children feel safe, supported, and able to thrive within an inclusive and nurturing environment.