Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum Policy

Written by Noahs Ark on 26th February 2015. Posted in

Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum/ Play Policy

The overarching aim of our EYFS policy is to help children achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well being.

We believe that every child should be valued and respected and deserves the very best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential. Young children are vulnerable and their experience in an early years setting has a major impact on their future life chances. We therefore offer a secure, safe, stimulating and happy environment indoors and outdoors on a daily basis because this supports children to thrive and develop.

We follow the New Early Years Foundation Stage’s (EYFS) principled approach to guide the work we do with children. This principled approach is built on four guiding themes:

• A Unique Child – every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self assured.
• Positive Relationships – children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and their keyperson.
• Enabling Environments – the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning.
• Learning and Development – children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.

When applying the four principles, we look carefully at children, consider their needs, their interests, and their stages of development and use all of this information to help plan a challenging and enjoyable experience across all areas of Learning and Development.

There are seven areas of learning:

3 Prime areas

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

4 Specific Areas

• Mathematics;
• Understanding the World;
• Expressive Arts and Designs;
• Literacy.

None of these areas of Learning and Development can be delivered in isolation from the others. They are equally important and depend on each other to support a rounded approach to child development. All the areas are delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities.

Children are encouraged and supported to learn through play which reflects their wide ranging and varied interests and preoccupations. We believe that in their play children learn at their highest level and that play with peers is important for children’s development Children are also encouraged to be active in their learning as they learn best through physical and mental challenges which are achievable. This means that their learning needs to involve other people, objects, ideas and events and engage / involve them for sustained periods.

Practitioners support children to enhance their ability to think critically and ask questions by providing opportunities to play with ideas in different situations and with a variety of resources which encourage them to discover and make connections.

Parents are children’s first and most enduring educators and so we endeavour to ensure to work in close partnership with parents as this has a positive impact on children’s development and learning.

In order to provide children with a secure foundation for future learning in school and beyond by being sensitive to individual children’s needs, we operate a key person system. Every child has have an identified key person with special responsibility for a small group of children. They ensure that the activities / experiences offered on a daily basis are suitable for the stage the children have reached and enable learning to be fun and enjoyable. For this to happen, key people :

• Follow a consistent and appropriate daily routine which is displayed in every room for staff, parents, students and visitors to refer to.
• Carry out on-going observational assessment to inform planning for each child’s continuing development through play based activities / experiences. Encourage parents to contribute to their child’s on-going assessment and ensure they are kept up to date with their progress towards the early learning goals
• Take a flexible approach which responds quickly to children’s interests, learning and development needs.
• Work to ensure there is coherence across different settings the child attends and to the child’s experience at home.

To ensure we offer high quality experiences we regularly reflect on our practice and so continually look for ways to improve the quality of the learning, development and care offered to our children.

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