Children are born ready, able and eager to learn. They actively reach out to interact with other people, and in the world around them. The four themes of the EYFS underpin all the guidance. These include: A Unique Child, Positive Relationships, Enabling Environments and Learning and Development. The Principles of the EYFS, Characteristics of Effective Learning together with the Prime and Specific areas of learning and development are all interconnected.

There are seven areas of learning and development. We support children to develop across the 7 areas of learning. However, our focus is to ensure children are secure in the Prime areas of Learning. These areas are essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.

Prime Areas of Learning

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

Specific Areas of Learning

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

We believe that children learn best by actively pursuing their interests and ideas through exploratory play, supported by experienced staff who extend children's learning, facilitating the child's process of creating and developing theories about the world.

Children’s personal, social and emotional development and communication and language is central to their learning. We support this through the development of positive and caring relationships. Each child has a key person who observes, interacts and records on our family app to share with parents/carers.

We encourage the development of self-confidence and self-awareness and children become independent learners by choosing resources and accessing all areas of the environment. We support children in managing feelings and emotions through giving them the vocabulary to name a range of emotions and use them to solve problems within their play. 

Our experienced and creative team plan alongside the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Providing activities and experiences based on observations of children’s individual needs, interests and parental involvement. This includes a range of child and adult lead experiences.

Indoor and outdoor play is an important part of children's learning and development.  A rich and varied curriculum ensures children have access to exciting play and learning inside and outside.  The children have access every day to the outdoor spaces within the centre. They are free to flow inside and outside throughout the session. We are fortunate to have an outside covered area for those very wet days! However, the children are encouraged by the team to enjoy and play in all weathers including rain, snow, and sleet, hail and of course, sunshine. We always ensure the children are appropriately dressed to ensure fun, excitement and learning. Physical play is very important as it encourages children’s co-ordination, control and health and wellbeing.

Story Curriculum

Each term a range of books are chosen which form our ‘termly focus stories’ – many of the activities and experiences which go on throughout the term are linked to the characters, themes and concepts which can be found within these books. Linking children’s learning to storytelling in this way provides many opportunities for children to become immersed in their play experiences, having built an understanding of the accompanying book.