In our Early Years we view every child as an individual, to ensure they reach their full potential. This is achieved through our bespoke curriculum where creativity and purposeful play opportunities are at the core of what we do. We capture the children's imagination and make their learning irresistible, encouraging our children to develop into resilient, confident, independent critical thinkers and problem solvers. This gives our children a solid foundation to build on future achievements as they continue their learning journey. 

We place a good deal of importance on the characteristics of effective learning:

• playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’ (you can support your child by, for example, encouraging them to try out new experiences and asking open-ended questions that might stimulate their curiosity)
• active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements (allow your child to play independently – avoid leading your child’s play, and don’t let them engage for too long in passive activities like watching TV); and
• creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things (when your child is playing, provide some challenges and allow them to be inventive – try leaving fewer toys for them but add a few unknown objects for them to use… don’t forget how much fun a cardboard box can be!).

Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:

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

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning. As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the world
• Expressive Arts and Design.

These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside.

Staff in EYFS find out what children want to know – what interests them, sparks their natural curiosity, engages them to be effective learners – by making informal observations of the children and having discussions with children and parents to inform the direction of learning. This will usually influence future topics in the class. What children need to know also derives from observations but staff make sure they use Early Years and Key Stage 1 curriculum documents to make sure we are aware of expectations so children are challenged appropriately.

We will have encouraged our children to develop independence, perseverance and reasoning skills by demonstrating high levels of engagement in their thinking. These skills result in the thrill of learning and the children will show sustained concentration on their tasks.