Our Early Years Curriculum is designed to provide a strong foundation for your child’s future learning, including developing a positive attitude to learning. In giving your child a broad range of knowledge and skills we lay the foundation for excellent future progress throughout their school and life. To make this happen, learning and development opportunities are planned around your child’s specific needs and interests and regularly assessed and reviewed. Adults respond to those needs and interests, guiding their development through warm, positive interactions in an encouraging, stimulating and a well-resourced indoor and outdoor environment.
In the Reception Year, it is the adult’s role to extend and provide further challenge to your child’s learning. Here we seek to initiate and offer great depth to your child’s experiences. Our staff skilfully interact and sensitively scaffold, support and enhance your child’s knowledge, skills and understanding. In addition, we help them to develop their thinking through their participation in activities and with the skilled involvement of our staff.
We meet your child's needs by:
· caring for the ‘whole’ i.e. your child’s health, both physical and mental, their feelings and their thinking and emotional development
· ensuring they have the opportunity to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding to achieve success and to build a thirst for lifelong learning
· teaching the foundations of reading, writing and maths that will develop basic (essential) skills and to enable them to access the wider curriculum
· providing a stimulating environment, indoors and out, with many opportunities to be curious, ask questions and to be eager to discover and learn
· providing opportunities, time and space for them to pursue their own interests, and time to interact and share with others
· providing opportunities for them to make choices and decisions to develop their independence
· providing ethnically and culturally diverse experiences including resources and stories which reflect different cultures and values
· creating a purposeful atmosphere, where teachers can focus on teaching and pupils on learning
· working closely with you, the parents/carers and respecting the fact that you are experts in the knowledge of your own child.
The content of the curriculum is planned in the seven areas of learning & development
THREE PRIME AREAS:
· Communication and Language –developing skills and confidence in speaking and listening in a range of situations.
· Physical Development – developing co-ordination, control, and movement through being active.
· Personal, Social and Emotional Development – within clear boundaries and expectations, the forming of positive relationships, developing social skills and respect for others and understanding appropriate behaviour.
FOUR SPECIFIC AREAS:
· Literacy – developing skills by encouraging your child to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Providing access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest. Opportunities are provided daily for developing fine motor skills and handwriting is formally taught and practised every day in reception.
· Mathematics – involves providing your child with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures.
· Understanding the World – finding out about people, places, technology and the environment.
· Expressive Arts and Design – exploring a wide range of media and sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.
Your child will learn through:
· Playing and exploring
· Learning actively
· Creating and thinking critically
In the Foundation Stage teachers make professional judgments about the balance between activities led or guided by adults and those led by the children. This balance will shift towards more activities 