Little Learners Pre-school is guided by the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS) The EYFS stipulates what we must be providing for each child in our care and is very focused on the unique child. The EYFS concentrates on seven areas of learning three PRIME areas and four SPECIFIC areas. During the children's time with us we will concentrate predominantly on the PRIME areas as these are the foundations for all further learning and development moving forward. The SPECIFIC areas naturally occur during the children's play in a well resourced Pre-school when engagement is high and staff involvement is of a high standard. At Little Learners we strive to ensure that staff interactions with children are of a high quality to ensure the children are acheiving their maximum potential, but feel safe, respected, challenged, supported and are mostly importantly are having fun.
The PRIME areas of the EYFS are the most improtant foudation to your child's learning and without these it is difficult to move foward. They are:
PSED - Personal, social and emotional development -
This is the most important skill children need to learn. This underpins everything. Children need to know what rules and boundaries are, how to share and take turns, how to be confident, resilient and interact appropriately with others. There are so many skills to learn under this heading and it is something that we continue to learn as we grown and mature well into adulthood.
CL - Communication and Language -
Again another highly important skill. Children have a range of ways of interacting and communicating from birth onwards. This skill is something that takes time to develop and not all children have a smooth path. Children need to be exposed to langauge and watch others talk and communicate before they themselves can begin to produce sounds, words, speech etc. Children can also communicate by means of signs, gestures, facial expressions and body language. All of these methods and ways are important and staff at Little Leaners will support communication by modelling simple appropraite language, using Makaton, gesture, visual prompts as well s many other ways to support language aquistion.
PD - Physical Development -
A child goes through a number of physical milestones as soon as they are born and for each child this often happen at different stages. Children are practicing, developing and refining their physical skills all of the time and in Pre-school we provide lots of activities to improve and challenge their physicality. We have various equipment such as bikes, stepping stones, hoops, balls and climbing equipment as well as other equipment such as crates and planks which require the children to use their initiative and critical thinking as well as promoting their physical skills. We ensure that each child's individual needs are met so for children who maybe less able there is plenty of support, encouragement and praise (as for all children).
The SPECIFIC areas are:
Maths
This area of learning is self explanatory really. Rather than having a spcific area where children can find maths resources, resources can be found all around the setting. Maths is and should be everywhere and practitioners use their expertise to introduce the langauge of maths, so for example big, small, numbers etc into play experiences as children are playing and engaged.
Understanding of the World
This should really be re-titled understanding of their world. For this area of learning we concentrate on how things work, what they do, people we know and things around us. The most popular subject in this area by far is bugs. We invite a company called Wild Fangs into the setting once a month to introduce the chldren to a variety of different creatures. Practitioners often support the children with their bug hunts as well as talking to them about people close to them and the environment around them. ICT is also part of this section and children have opportunities to experince different types.
Expressive Arts and Design
One of the favourite areas of development. This area encompasses role play, messy and creative play and all kinds of sensory expression such as singing and music. The children get plenty of opportunity for this throughout our sessions so this is always an area of development that comes on quickly.
Literacy
An important area but this is not an area that is structured as in school. Children have plenty of opportunity to make marks in a variety of different ways, through messy play such as drawing in sand and through using instruments on play dough to painting using cars. Children are exposed to the written word all the time with their name cards, the labels on the boxes as well as the more obvious things like books and posters. It's very improtant that literacy doesn't become to formalised as then children often become dis-interested in it and will avoid it at all costs. Our practitioners make it fun and inviting.
If you would like to know more about the Early Years Foundation Stage in more parent friendly language this publication maybe helpful:
http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2015/09/4Children_ParentsGuide_Sept_2015v4WEB1.pdf
We provide all of our parents with a copy of this before their child starts.