Holistic approach

It is now recognised that a holistic approach is the best way to provide for children’s needs – an approach which puts learning and development within the wider context of children’s welfare and wellbeing.

The EYFS curriculum offers a learning through play approach through which children:

Learn to feel secure and safe
Explore, practice and make sense of their world
Build up new concepts and skills
Learn how to work with, alongside others, to share and take turns
Take risks and make mistakes
Be creative and use their imagination
Investigate, experiment and solve problems
Learn to understand their own needs and those of others
Communicate with others
Express their fears, anxieties and excitement
Learn boundaries
HAVE FUN

EYFS Curriculum

7 areas of learning

The ways in which the child engages with other people and their environment - playing and exploring, active learning, and creating and thinking critically - underpin learning and development across all areas and support the child to remain an effective and motivated learner.

PRIME AREAS are fundamental, work together, and move through to support development in all other areas.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development

SPECIFIC AREAS include essential skills and knowledge for children to participate successfully in society.

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Helps children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.

Self-confidence and self-awareness: children are confident to try new activities, and say why they like some activities more than others. They are confident to speak in a familiar group, will talk about their ideas, and will choose the resources they need for their chosen activities. They say when they do or don’t need help.

Managing feelings and behaviour: children talk about how they and others show feelings, talk about their own and others’ behaviour, and its consequences, and know that some behaviour is unacceptable. They work as part of a group or class, and understand and follow the rules. They adjust their behaviour to different situations, and take changes of routine in their stride.

Making relationships: children play co-operatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their activity. They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.

2. Communication and Language

Development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.

Listening and attention: children listen attentively in a range of situations. They listen to stories, accurately anticipating key events and respond to what they hear with relevant comments, questions or actions. They give their attention to what others say and respond appropriately, while engaged in another activity.

Understanding: children follow instructions involving several ideas or actions. They answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about their experiences and in response to stories or events.

Speaking: children express themselves effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs. They use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future. They develop their own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.

3. Physical Development

Provides opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food.

Moving and handling: children show good control and co-ordination in large and small movements. They move confidently in a range of ways, safely negotiating space. They handle equipment and tools effectively, including pencils for writing.

Health and self-care: children know the importance for good health of physical exercise, and a healthy diet, and talk about ways to keep healthy and safe. They manage their own basic hygiene and personal needs successfully, including dressing and going to the toilet independently

4. Literacy

Involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.

Reading: children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.

Writing: children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

5. Mathematics

This provides children 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.

Numbers: children count reliably with numbers from 1 to 20, place them in order and say which number is one more or one less than a given number. Using quantities and objects, they add and subtract two single-digit numbers and count on or back to find the answer. They solve problems, including doubling, halving and sharing.

Shape, space and measures: children use everyday language to talk about size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money to compare quantities and objects and to solve problems. They recognise, create and describe patterns. They explore characteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical language to describe them.

6. Understanding the world

Involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

People and communities: children talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. They know that other children don’t always enjoy the same things, and are sensitive to this. They know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.

The world: children know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another. They make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.

Technology: children recognize that a range of technology is used in places such as homes and schools. They select and use technology for particular purposes

7. Expressive Arts & Design

Means enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology

Exploring and using media and materials: children sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them. They safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Being imaginative: children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes. They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.

Child Development Record

As part of the system in our preschool, we carry out periodic observations on the children to monitor their progress and linking it to the prescribed developmental charts.

The developmental charts coincide with the developmental norms enabling the children’s development to be thoroughly monitored and recorded and then fed back to the parents during our termly meetings. These are logged and kept within your child’s personal file that follows them throughout their transition from room to room.

The charts allow us to monitor the progress your child makes covering their seven areas of development as well as monitoring the progress that they make with their feeding and toileting skills. Additionally we also record the progress made with your child’s hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills.

In addition to this, the development charts are also accompanied with school report that are written termly, with copies put into their developmental files. Upon writing the last report before the child leaves to attend school, parents can if they wish to, share these reports with teachers of future schools to guide them in their development.