Early Years Foundation Stage

Our Foundation Stage consists of a twenty six place morning nursery class and a thirty place reception class. We have a great team of staff in the setting who work closely to meet the needs of all of the children in our care, providing a safe, stimulating and positive learning environment. 

Our classroom is zoned into different themed areas to support independent learning. We have a roleplay area, healthy snack zone, messy area, a malleable area, sand and water, a message centre, creation station, computer access, small world, construction, cosy reading corners, music area, fine motor table, maths area, reflection space, sensory area and last but not least an atelier or loose parts area. 

During 'busy times' the children move freely around the space accessing all areas independently. There is also freeflow access to our outdoor space where the children can challenge themselves physically as well as support the learning that happens indoors.  Throughout the day children will be encouraged to join in with teacher and adult led activities as well as focused maths, literacy and phonics sessions. The adults also find opportunities to follow the children's interests as well as use an 'objective-led' approach where focused objectives are taken into the children's play.

We use the children's ideas to help us plan our topics and always respond to events within the school, community and news to ensure children have a broad and balanced learning experience. We aim to provide children with lots of 'real life' learning opportunities and make the most of our immediate surroundings, practical resources as well as special visitors and experiences to enhance learning. 

We are always observing the children  and use this information to plan individual 'next steps' in learning. We use 'Tapestry', the online learning journey to record observations and celebrate and share children's achievements and successes. Our 'stay and play' and 'stay and read' sessions are the perfect opportunity for sharing learning experiences with parents. We also encourage parents to comment on 'Tapestry' observations as well as share and celebrate children's experiences at home. Our weekly 'week ahead's' are the perfect way to keep parents up to date with what the children will be experiencing and learning each week as well as giving ideas and suggestions for parents to continue the learning at home.  We hold many parent workshops throughout the year as our aim is to support the home learning environment wherever possible. 

We are always evolving and looking for new and exciting ways to enhance the children's learning experience. We will be using some fantastic ideas relating to 'reciprocal reading' to encourage the children to think carefully about the stories they hear and read. We will be encouraging children to develop a 'growth mindset' and will be asking them to think their character development using our character heroes and powers! (to find out more about this visit the 'growth mindset' and 'character education' section on the website). We will also be finding new and exciting ways to engage our children through challenging continuous provision and by following their lead in learning.