How and What do we Learn?

As an early years setting we plan topics for each term but our learning follows the children’s interests and play. Our current topic is called ‘All about me!’, but does not focus on just the children: it can be likes/dislikes, families, homes, favourite food and toys, to name just a few areas of learning. We use Development Matters as our curriculum guidance. Activities are planned for the children but are adapted quickly to suit interests. Children frequently bring in ‘findings’ from home or from their walk to school that morning, so our curriculum can quickly change from painting portraits to learning about wild bird egg shells or seasonal flowers.

There are seven areas of learning in the Early Years curriculum. There are three prime areas of learning: these are Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) Communication and Language (CL) and Physical development (PD. There are four specific areas of learning: Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding of the World and Expressive Arts and Design. All children have a main focus on the prime areas of learning throughout their preschool years, but when the children are in the year before they start school they develop their learning by including the specific areas of learning too. However all activities are available to all children and if they want to they can repeat an activity a number of times!

As the Preschool is part of the school, we follow the same schemes of learning. Early Years and Key Stage One learn phonics through Read Write Inc, a systematic way of teaching children phonics. In Preschool we learn two sounds a week, with follow up activities such as chalking the sound/letter, painting, saying or writing on big paper. The children are also encouraged to learn how to write names. The children are grouped according to their phonic knowledge, so they receive personalised learning. We work in the same way for Maths, following a scheme called Big Maths. This focuses on what the children know and how to extend their learning, whilst also filling learning gaps. The scheme follows a step-by-step planning system so that the children can build on their learning.

We capture our learning through the school’s online Seesaw application keeping parents informed of what we do during our days.

Our staff provide encouragement to all the children in the setting, focussing on where our children’s interests are. We offer engaging activities to inspire them to learn and which promote their development and independence.