What will my child Learn in the Early Years?
At this stage of their learning, your child will be mainly learning through play based activities. They will also be leaning about rules and routines and developing early literacy and maths skills, learning about the world around them and learning social skills.
The importance of play based learning
In the EYFS your child will begin to learn by doing things for themselves, by exploring and investigating, watching and listening, talking and discussing, creating and communicating -in other words, playing. Play is children's work and playing hard is very tiring! Play can also be very messy as your child will be learning both inside with sand, water and paint, and also in the outdoors with mud, leaves and so on, so you can expect some mucky clothes at the end of the day!
The Early Year Foundation stage
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a curriculum for children age three to five years old. This is broken down into three prime aspects and four specific areas of learning. The three prime aspects of learning are:
Personal, social and emotional development
Children's personal, social and emotional development(PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.
Communication and Language
The development of children's spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children's back-and -forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children's language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and they then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures.
Physical development
Physical activity is vital in children's al round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child's strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand eye co-ordination which is later linked to Early Literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities t explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practise of using small world tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
In addition to these three Prime aspects of learning, there are four specific areas:
Literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading . Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension(necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk to children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words(decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).
Mathematics
Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the number to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding- such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting- children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space measures. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in Mathematics, looking for patterns and relationships, spot connections, 'have a go', talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Understanding the world
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children's personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them- from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children's vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.
Expressive arts
The development of children's artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe.
Most of the time your child will be learning all seven areas of learning together, in a fairly jumbled way. So if they spend lots of time in the sand area there's no need for concern! They may well be covering all kinds of important learning: working with different materials; finding out about shape, quantity and volume; creating imaginative worlds; felling different textures; and even developing motor skills and strength for writing!
Partnership with parents.
We believe that parents and Carers are a child's first educator and therefore work very closely with you to ensure you are involved in all area's of your child's learning. Evidence Me is used in both Nursery and Reception, and is a digital tool where you can observe your child's progress. parents are also able to upload photographs of the experiences they are sharing with their children at home. We want parents to feel they can speak to us about their child at any time and feel comfortable in our setting. Our door is always open!
Parents are invited to our open mornings throughout the year. These events have a focus to show parents what type of activities children complete in school.
Below is a useful website that you can access to support your child's learning at home.