Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), the statutory framework that sets the standards for Learning, Development and Care for children from birth up to 5. The EYFS sets the standards that all early years’ providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and give children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.

Four guiding principles shape our practice:

• Unique Child
• Positive Relationships
• Enabling Environments
• Children develop & learn in different ways and at different rates

Our teaching and learning is aided by ‘Development Matters’ in the EYFS. This non-statutory guidance supports us to implement statutory requirements. ‘Development Matters’ includes the characteristics of effective learning and seven areas of learning and development. These are all important and interconnected.

We have a strong focus on the Characteristics of Effective Learning, this helps us to consider how children are learning and not just what they are learning. The ways in which a child engages with other people and their environment underpins learning and development across all areas and supports the child to remain a motivated and effective learner. The characteristics of effective learning are:

• Playing and Exploring – engagement
Finding out and exploring, Playing with what they know, Being willing to ‘have a go’.

• Active learning – motivation
Being involved and concentrating, Keeping trying, Enjoying achieving what they set out to do.

• Creating and Thinking Critically – thinking
Having their own ideas, Making links, Choosing ways to do things.

Alongside the characteristics of effective learning, we also have a firm emphasis on the seven areas of learning. These include the three prime areas together with the four specific areas.

The prime areas are fundamental, work together, and move through to support development in all other areas.

The three prime areas are;

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

The specific areas include essential skills and knowledge for children to participate successfully in society.

The four specific areas are;

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Art and Design

At Slough Centre Nursery we place great emphasis upon learning through play. We believe that it is important to provide children with a range of play experiences both free choice and adult directed; including structured smaller group time sessions.

The teaching approach can then be designed for the child; being aware of each child’s individual needs, interests and preferred learning styles. Within the organisation of the day children are given freedom to make choices, develop and plan their ideas, to review and recall and to encounter and solve problems independently. The children are also introduced to new concepts and skills through group time sessions with a particular focus on specific learning areas (e.g. maths and literacy) during these times. These often provide the stimulus for further exploration during free choice play.

We encourage and support parents to understand and engage with our approach through welcome meetings, newsletters, parent chats, learning displays, parents in nursery days and workshops throughout the year.

PARENT'S GUIDE TO EYFS