SandonEYFS
Click for the EYFS curriculum here
Intent
High quality Early Years education gives children the foundations they need to take the next steps in their learning journey. At Sandon JMI we want our Reception children to be happy, secure and enjoy coming to school. We want them to be engaged and motivated about what they are learning and develop the self-regulation, resilience, independence and confidence they need in order to be successful in the rest of their school life. High priority is given to developing children’s vocabulary and language and we want children to become confident and capable readers who demonstrate a love of sharing books and reading, stories and rhymes. Our small class size enables us to give children lots of individual attention ensuring that every child makes good progress from their starting points and children’s individual needs are met.
In Reception we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
This is organised into 7 areas of learning:
Prime Areas:
Communication and language
Physical development
Personal, social and emotional development
Specific Areas:
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive arts and design
Implementation
In Reception children learn through a balance of child initiated play, adult supported play, whole class teaching, small group teaching and individual teaching.
Children learn and play both inside and outside. We have a large garden which we share with Cygnets PreSchool and access to ‘Forest School’. Regular Forest school sessions give children a greater context to our Understanding the World curriculum.
High priority given to children’s Personal, Social and Emotional development ensuring that children have the skills they need to be able to get along with other people – a crucial life skill. We want children to develop kindness, be able to solve disputes and have the independence, resilience and self-belief they need when they go into a larger class, work with a partner, work independently or in a group – all of which they will need to do throughout their school life. Children learn about the language of feelings through Zones of Regulation resources.
Children’s Communication and Language Development is given high priority, we develop language and vocabulary though our daily routines and conversations, our story sessions, singing and rhyme sessions, Literacy and Drama sessions, this all ensures children have the vocabulary they need ready for Year 1.
We use Supersonic Phonic Friends phonics scheme ensuring that children have high quality synthetic phonics teaching and White Rose Maths scheme ensuring children have strong foundations in Maths.
High priority given to developing a love of reading and books. Children have at least 3 story sessions a day and a daily singing and rhyme session. These sessions develop vocabulary and comprehension and feed the imagination and well as developing children’s knowledge.
Every day we have a whole class gross or fine motor movement session so that children develop the physical strength in order to write, core strength to sit at a table and on the carpet and hold pencils and tools.
Every day we have a ‘family’ snack time where we all sit together sharing a snack at the table, developing our language and listening skills, developing independence when we learn how to set the table or clear up spills and develop personal and social skills for example, waiting for a turn, saying please and thank you. This is also an opportunity to teach children about healthy life styles for example, hand washing, healthy food choices.
