The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 

The Early Years Foundation Stage is how the government and early years’ professionals describe the time in your child’s life between birth and age five.

This is a very important stage as it helps your child get ready for school as well as preparing them for learning and successes in their future.  When your child is born up until the age of five, their early years’ experience should be happy, active, exciting, fun and secure; and support their development, care and learning needs.

The EYFS framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning. As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

• Literacy;
• Mathematics;
• Understanding of the world; and
• Expressive arts and design

These area of learning are developed and explored through the child’s individual interests and with experienced practitioners, all areas of learning are promoted.

Each term your child’s key person will complete a progress report for you to read, this will give you an insight to how your child is progressing at pre-school. This also is a great opportunity to share any information that will benefit your child with their key person.

In the Moment Planning

Winter Gardens Preschool follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (see more information under the EYFS tab) through ‘In the Moment’ planning which allows children to follow their own individual interests.

“Small children have a natural desire to learn, explore and question. Settings and practitioners offer core provisions and an environment that enables this activity in order to capture the moment of engagement for each child. Careful observation by practitioners is key to utilising the ‘In the

moment planning’ approach – opportunities to seize the moment when a child shows a level of interest and curiosity that can be drawn out and then enhanced and built upon need to be recognised – these are normally called ‘teachable moments’. Written ‘planning’ is then done retrospectively in the form of observations, records of the interactions and notes on outcomes”.

https://www.nurseryresources.org/articles/learning-journey/in-the-moment-planning/

Every term, your child will have a “special week” where their Key person will give extra focus to your child for the week, focusing on their interests and development.