Curriculum
Early Years Foundation Stage - EYFS
The Early Years Foundation Stage is a play-based curriculum for children from birth to five years, which allows children to explore and learn in an environment that is secure and safe, yet challenging.
Our team plans, designs, execute activities as well as make assessment judgments based on the seven areas of learning.
Seven Areas of Learning
Harnessing Creativity
Communication and Language
Communication and Language – involves children being provided with the opportunity to experience a language rich environment; develop confidence in expressing their wants, needs and feelings and being able to speak and listen in a variety of contexts.
There are two goals for language development.
Listening and speaking: using spoken language to communicate with others, enlarging one’s vocabulary, expressing oneself, understanding the oral speech of others, participating in a conversation and using language to solve problems.
As children learn to listen and speak they gain control of themselves and their world, relate effectively to others and gather and store more and more information.
Reading and writing: making sense of written language, understanding the purpose of print and how it works, gaining knowledge of the alphabet, writing letters and words.
When children begin to read they gain access to new worlds of information and faraway places, including the world of imagination. Writing things down expands memory, communication and understanding.
Physical Development
Physical Development – involves children being encouraged to be interactive and active in their learning and develop control, coordination and movements. They are supported in understanding the importance of physical activity and how to make healthy choices at meal times.
There are two goals for physical development.
Achieving gross motor control: moving the large muscles in the body, especially the arms and legs, consciously and deliberately. Gross motor control includes balance and stability; movements such as running, jumping, hopping, galloping and skipping and physical manipulations such as throwing licking and catching.
Achieving fine motor control: using and coordinating the small muscles in the hands and wrists with dexterity. As these fine muscles develop children are able to perform self-help skills and manipulate small objects such as scissors and writing tools. The achievement of fine motor skills generally lags behind gross motor development.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Personal, Social and Emotional Development – involves supporting children in developing a strong, positive sense of themselves, and of others; form strong attachments and develop respect for other to develop their social skills and learn how to effectively manage their feelings. This area also supports the children in understanding appropriate behaviour and develops confidence in their own abilities.
There are two goals for social emotional development:
Achieving a sense of self: knowing oneself and relating to other people-both children and adults.
Taking responsibility for self and others: following rules and routines, respecting others and taking initiative.
Behaving in a pro-social way: showing empathy and getting along in the world, for example, by sharing and taking turns.
Literacy
Literacy – encourages children to link sounds and letters and begin to read and write. Children are given access to a wide range of reading materials to ignite their interest.
Mathematics
Mathematics – encourages opportunities to develop and improve counting skills, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems and to describe shapes, space, and measures.
Understanding the World
Understanding the World – involves supporting children in making sense of the world around them and their community by providing opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Expressive Arts and Design
Expressive Arts and Design – enables children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as encourages the sharing of thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, role-play and design and technology.
Effective Learning
When planning and guiding activities practitioners will reflect upon the different ways that children learn and ensure they utilise this within their practice. The characteristics of Effective Learning are:
Playing and Exploring
Playing and Exploring – supports children’s engagement and investigation and to experience things through being willing to ‘have a go’
Active Learning
Active Learning – supports children’s motivation to learn by helping develop their concentration, ability and will to keep trying when challenges occur and celebration of completing a task
Creating and Thinking Critically
Creating and Thinking Critically – supports children’s thinking skills through developing ideas, making links between differing ideas and create strategies for completing a task.
Cognitive Development
Cognitive development refers to the mind and how it works. It involves how children think, how they see their world, and how they use what they learn.
There are three goals of Cognitive Development.
Learning and Problem Solving
Learning and problem solving - being purposeful about acquiring and using information, resources, and materials.
As children observe events around them, ask questions, make predictions and test possible solutions learning reaches beyond acquiring facts.
Persistence and knowing how to apply knowledge expands their learning even further.
Thinking Logically
Thinking logically - gathering and making sense of the information by comparing, contrasting, sorting, classifying, counting, measuring and recognising patterns.
As children use logical thinking, they organise their world conceptually and gain a better understanding of how it works.
Representing and Thinking Symbolically
Representing and thinking symbolically - using objects in a unique way, for instance a cup to represent a telephone or a broom to represent a horse: pretending, for instance to be mommy or a fire-fighter; portraying the world through charts or pictures for instance, making a graph to show changes in the weather over time or a drawing to show what happened to a character in a story.
Representations and symbols free children from the world of literal meaning and allow them to use materials and their imagination to explore abstract ideas.