Early Years Foundation Stage

In Foundation Stage we are very lucky because Reception and Nursery learn and play together. Making friends and playing together is very important to us. We learn to share and take turns, how to show kindness and think of others, to be brave, take risks and try new things, to listen and follow instructions and value what our friends say to us. Our classrooms are full of exciting activities and games and we love playing outside to take advantage of all the different weather conditions. A windy day could see us making kites, a freezing day means ice exploration and a rainy day could see paint mixing in puddles – there really is so much fun to be had!

Reception children have a big responsibility in the unit and act as role models to the Nursery children. We love to play together in all of our different areas of learning in the unit such as: role play, small world, sand and water, maths, writing and mark making, malleable, creative, reading, investigation and our brilliant outdoor trim trail area.

Throughout the year we plan exciting themes around the children’s interests, that also prepares them for the next key stage - for example ‘Planet Earth’, ‘We are Storytellers’, ‘Sparkly Celebrations’, ‘We Love to Grow’, ‘Deep in the Woods’ and ‘Seaside Explorers’. We always a incorporate a rich and varied selection of high quality texts, including: traditional tales (Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Gingerbread Man, The Three Little Pigs), classic favourites (The Gruffalo, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and contemporary stories (Goodnight Spaceman, The Lion who Wanted to Love, Somebody Swallowed Stanley).

Nursery children learn songs and nursery rhymes and begin to understand rhyme and alliteration. They learn to listen for sounds in words and then practise oral blending to help them to prepare for Reception. When children are ready, usually in Reception, they begin to learn to read - by hearing sounds in words and then learning what those sounds look like. This develops into reading sentences with increasing fluency and also learning some tricky (non-decodable) words by sight.

We have so much fun learning through our play together that we don’t even realise we are learning!