Early Years
“When we succeed in giving every child the best start in their early years, we give them what they need today. We also set them up with every chance of success tomorrow.” DFE 2020
Education doesn't begin when your child enters school. Your child has been learning since birth. At Sandringham, we build on your child's prior experiences and support them to become independent, active, resilient, capable and confident learners.
We aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, which will enable each child to develop personally, socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, creatively and intellectually to their full potential. Each child is valued as an individual, and learning and teaching is based on the key understanding that children develop at different rates within the different areas of learning.
At Sandringham we aim to:
- Provide the best for every child by getting to know our children and their needs, identifying which children need extra support and working with parents so that all children have an equal chance of success.
- Providing high quality care. Our staff are caring, listen to and value the children and families they work with, demonstrate empathy, respect and understanding and always put the children first.
- Provide a broad and balanced curriculum which is ambitious and well sequenced to ensure skills and knowledge are built upon securely. Interaction and language is paramount within our curriculum and we always ensure our children’s interests inspire their learning.
- Provide opportunities for children to be reflective and to “learn to learn” through our learning values and continuous opportunities for learning reviews.
- Provide opportunities for children to learn through planned purposeful adult led activities and child-initiated play in all areas of learning and development in the indoor and outdoor environment;
- Use accurate assessment, noticing what children ‘can do and what they know’ to ensure we plan the right next steps in their learning.
- Work in partnership with parents and carers, providing clear information about their child’s progress and learning, promoting home learning, promoting reading, talking and play in the home environment and valuing their contributions to their child’s learning journey.
Within the EYFS there is one nursery class and two reception classes.
We have 26 places in our nursery with one teacher and one nursery support assistant. We offer full day places or morning or afternoon sessions.
We have two reception classes with a total of 60 places. We currently have a teacher in each class and three support assistants working across the unit. Each member of the team has an iPad to capture learning electronically using the online Tapestry platform. Children also have access to iPads to support their learning.
Our Early Years setting, provides a safe, exciting and motivating environment in which the children learn through a play. They collaborate with adults and other children and develop key skills and knowledge linked to the areas of learning and development.
Areas of Learning and Development
The EYFS is made up of seven inter-connected areas of learning and development. The three prime areas crucial for building foundations are:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
These are strengthened and applied via the four specific areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
These 7 areas provide a framework for the EYFS curriculum. All areas are delivered through a balance of adult led and child initiated activities and though our provision we attempt to provide activities which cover a range of learning areas .
The revised EYFS curriculum also places high emphasis on the importance of practitioners recognising and understanding the ways in which young children learn in order to support them as effective learners. These characteristics of effective learning are an integral part of the three prime and four specific areas of learning and describe the skills, attitudes and approaches to learning which can be nurtured in the EYFS.
The characteristics of effective learning are:
- Active learning– children keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy their achievements
- Playing and exploring– children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
- Creating and thinking critically– children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas and develop strategies for doing things.
Our children have access to both indoor and outdoor provision in our setting. Our outdoor areas provides children with the freedom to investigate, explore, problem solve and be imaginative and therefore we offer daily, extended play sessions in the outdoor areas. We have many areas outdoors, including: mud kitchen, stage/music areas, water play, story and writing areas, gardening, bug and bird investigation areas, large construction and den building, role play materials, bikes and trikes and other physical development equipment. Outdoor play is highly valued and activities outside compliment and reflects indoor provision. Children carry out activities and learning in other areas of the school such as the wildlife area, KS1 hall and KS1 climbing equipment.
Our environments promote children’s independence to explore recent learning and practise new skills. As teachers, we assess the childrens abilities and then enhance the areas to overtly link to this assessment, our adult-directed learning and the children's interests.
Tapestry
At Sandringham, we have a strong relationship with all our parents. We want you to know how well your child is doing and inform you about what they are learning about in school. In Nursery and Reception we use an app called Tapestry to record our observations and assessments and we can share some of these with you so that you are a part of your child’s learning journey!
You should expect to see photos, videos and comments at least once every half term. Every parent has also been linked to their child’s class so that you can see any whole class learning experiences that the children have taken part in.
Not only can we post photos and comments to your child’s learning profile but you can too! You can post photos of days out, new experiences or skills that your child has learnt. We use these in school as a talking point and it helps the staff build a whole picture of your child.
The app is a really easy and useful way for us to work together and we hope you enjoy posting and seeing photos of your child’s development and learning experiences during their time with us in Early Years.
Here are some helpful videos to help you get started with the Tapestry app.
Setting up your account - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ROkDnb4I0
How to access and add to your child’s ‘All About Me’ page - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxo3au-993Q
How to add an observation of your child - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=espJ96TJHV8