EYFS

Early childhood is the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives. It is not just a preparation for the next stage but is vitally important in itself.

At Kimberworth Community Primary School we aim to provide the highest quality care and education for all our children thereby giving them a strong foundation for their future learning. We create a safe and happy environment with motivating and enjoyable learning experiences that enable children to become confident and independent learners. We value the individual child and work alongside parents and carers to help every child reach their full potential.

Learning for children is a rewarding and enjoyable experience in which they explore, investigate, discover, create, practice, rehearse, repeat, revise and consolidate their developing knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes. During the Foundation Stage, many of these aspects of learning are brought together effectively through playing and talking.

From the start of the children’s journey in our Foundation Stage Day Care we hold the prime areas of learning at the heart of our curriculum. Building our children’s vocabulary is key to the learning that takes place in our Foundation Stage. We have projects in each stage of learning which build on key knowledge, concepts and vocabulary each year. This knowledge is embedded and built on each year. Building children’s language is key to opening up wider learning to children. We hold this with upmost importance and begin building the children’s talk as they join us from 1:1 interactions with staff in our Day Care, adding in small group sessions building up everyday vocabulary as our children join our F1 and whole class vocabulary sessions in our F2.

Our children take part in phonics sessions from Day Care with activities such as Beat Baby exploring rhythm through to our F1 where the children listen to sounds carefully, explore rhythm and rhyme. As the children move through our F1 they begin to learn letters through Read, Write Inc which we continue through to F2 as they begin to read and write.

Our Maths sessions are built on recalling key facts. We encourage the children to see patterns, look at similarities and differences. This builds a strong start to recall number patterns such as spots on a dice.

Over their time in our Foundation Stage the children will get to know 30 stories each year. These stories are linked to the learning in the classroom. The stories are read repetitively so the children know them really well.