Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfill their potential. A child’s experience in the early years has a major impact on their future life choices.
A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right, and it provides the foundation for children to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up. When parents choose a nursery, they want to know that the setting will keep their children safe and help them to thrive. The Early Years Foundation Stage is the framework that provides that assurance.
The overriding aim of the Early Years Foundation Stage is to help young children achieve outcomes such as staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic wellbeing.
Claremont aims to achieve these outcomes by:
Setting the standards for the learning, development and care young children should experience when they are outside the family home, ensuring that every child makes progress to their full potential.
Providing for equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice and ensuring that every child is included and not disadvantaged because of ethnicity, culture or religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties or disabilities, gender or ability.
Creating the framework for partnership working between parents and professionals and between all the settings that the child attends e.g. playgroups, child minders etc.
Laying a secure foundation for future learning through learning and development that is planned around the individual needs and interests of your child from the use of ongoing observational assessments.
Confidence, Independence and Have a Go we believe that by promoting these our children have the best chance of future success. A child who is willing to ‘Have a Go’ at a new challenge will develop problem solving skills, and build resilience’s. This is turn will boost independence and confidence. We include a mix of adult and child led learning to ensure that we offer a child centred approach.
There are seven areas of learning and development that shape educational programs in early years settings. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Three areas are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.
There are three prime areas:
- Communication and Language – Involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment. To develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves and communicate and listen in a range of situations.
- Physical Development – Involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children will also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development Involves providing opportunities for young 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 behavior in groups and to have confidence in their own abilities.
We will also support children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.
The specific areas are:
- Literacy Development involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children will be given access to a wide range of reading materials, (books, poems and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
- Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems.
- 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.
- Expressive Arts and Design involves 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.
Observations, Assessments and Online Journals
Your child’s key person will be recording your child’s progression in working towards the seven areas of learning. Ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning and development process. Your child’s key person will observe your child and respond appropriately to help them make progress from birth towards the early learning goals.
The staff will take photographs and write mini observations on your children’s individual learning and development throughout their time here, this is posted on an app. called ‘Tapestry’. Each photograph and observation will be assessed under headings from the Early Years Foundation Stage so that staff and parents can see how the child is developing in all areas. You will be asked to provide your email address when your child starts, so that we can send these to you. We would appreciate any suggestions and comments you wish to make about your child’s progress, as it helps us build a full picture of their learning journey. You will be invited to write mini observations, record special achievements and to add photographs.
There is a very strict and safe policy added to the application form to ensure that your child’s information and photographs cannot be seen by anyone other than Claremont staff and you the parent/carer.
Parents Evening
We hold a formal parents evening twice a year, so you have an opportunity to discuss your child’s progress and achievements in more detail.
Stay and Play Sessions
Stay and play sessions within the rooms take place throughout the year. We encourage parents, carers or family members to come along for these sessions to take part in their child’s nursery life and environment. These sessions allow you to play along with your child, to see the activities and resources they have access to and to speak to the staff involved in their day to day care here at Claremont Day Nursery.
Communication and language is a strength of the nursery. Staff support children to communicate in a variety of ways. This support ensures that children learn to become confident communicators.
