Welcome to Early Years! In our classroom we strongly believe that every child is a unique child. As practitioners, our job is to understand and observe each child’s development and to observe their learning and to track and assess their progress. By doing this, we are then able to plan next steps for every child to ensure that their progress is continual and ongoing. We work hard on building positive relationships with every child as we feel that this encourages them to be strong, independent learners by the end of Reception.
Over the past few years we have been working hard to develop our environment to provide every child with rich learning opportunities that are stimulating and inspiring. Our classroom offers many areas for children to develop new skills and for them to be able to build upon existing skills. We encourage independence in each area by providing challenging and exciting opportunities for every child.
In our writing areas we provide a range of different resources and challenges, which allows the children opportunities to write for different purposes based upon their own interests.
In our reading areas we ensure that the children are given access to a range of texts, including fiction and non-fiction to encourage a love of reading. We have also introduced comics and magazines based on the children’s interests along with puppets, story blocks, masks and story spoons.
In our number areas we provide opportunities for children to experiment with number, using a range of different objects. These objects encourage children to independently build on their skills of counting, ordering, sequencing and recognising. We have also incorporated shape, space and measure into our number areas to provide opportunities to develop everyday skills of time, measure, money and shape (including 2D and 3D shapes).
Our construction area allows children to build on their personal, social and emotional skills by encouraging them to work together, share resources and listen to each other’s ideas. This enables the children to successfully use this area to create different buildings and objects using the resources provided.
In our malleable area, children are provided with a range of resources that encourages them to strengthen and develop their fine motor skills. We often change what is in our malleable area, but some of our favourites are: playdough, noodles, straw, pasta, buttons, ice, jelly and shaving foam.
Our role play area is inspired by Reggio Emilia. The children are encouraged to use real cutlery and crockery alongside real fruits and vegetables. The children are trusted to chop the fruits and vegetables up independently during their play. They are also given real dry foods such as pasta and rice to explore during their play.
In our water area the children are encouraged to develop their fine and gross motor skills. Water play gives children many opportunities to develop these skills and their hand-eye co-ordination through actions like pouring, squeezing, squirting, scrubbing and stirring.
In our creative area the children are encouraged to experiment with a range of media and materials, finding out about the properties and modifying and manipulating them. This includes exploring sounds, patterns, movement and different tools and techniques and enables children to create wonderful inventions and representations of their own experiences.
We strongly believe that children gain enormous benefits from learning outdoors. Our outdoor environment allows opportunities for big scale play, problem solving, and creativity and enhances physical activity. Outdoor play extends children’s learning, allowing them to explore and investigate their surroundings. Every Friday our Reception children participate in Forest School. Forest School allows the children to be inquisitive, inventive and experimental. It helps to allow children to use their initiative and encourages independence.
Curriculum
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Miss Owens - Foundation Stage Leader
Miss Strong - Pre-school Leader
Mrs Ainsworth - Classroom Assistant and Forest School Leader
Miss Abbott - Classroom Assistant
Miss Roberts - Classroom Assistant