The Early Years Foundation Stage
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a Government framework that sets out minimum standards of care and learning that all childcare providers are expected to deliver. Its purpose is to ensure that children are provided with a rich learning experience tailored to their individual needs whilst being cared for in a safe and secure environment.
The EYFS is made up of 3 ‘prime areas’:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
and 4 ‘specific areas’:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
To enable nursery staff to implement the early years foundation stage, close observations and assessments are carried out by staff on your child as they play and learn. These observations are then used to plan for children’s next steps in relation to their learning, progress and development.
Here are a couple of guides to help explain the EYFS.
The Development Matters
What to Expect in the Early Years Foundation (parents guide)
Our intent, implementation and impact
Our Intent
Although we have opted to use the Development Matters, this is by no means the entire curriculum that we deliver. During the early years, children learn so much, way more than is in one document. Our curriculum is designed to support each and every child based on their individual needs and interests through play.
Our main focus is that children are happy, secure, valued and settled at our nursery, if this happens, we believe that everything else will follow. At Daisy Chains we believe that a homely atmosphere is paramount, and we aim to provide a safe and caring environment where all children can feel happy, relaxed and develop to their full potential.
We believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life to fulfil their full potential. We build close relationships with families and our wider community to promote the best outcomes for children.
We play alongside and continually observe our children to find gaps in their learning and we teach in a scaffolding way in order to close that gap. Each child requires different scaffolding building blocks, so the curriculum looks different for every child. It is however all underpinned by our ethos of learning through play, outdoor learning and personal, social and emotional development.
We believe that children should be independent learners and they are encouraged to problem solve for themselves, but also know that help is there if it is needed. We provide a wide range of new and exciting activities which include real life experiences which makes the children’s learning more purposeful.
Implementation
We provide a loving, safe, nurturing, supporting learning environment for our children to thrive. We encourage self-esteem and confidence, and we encourage our children to become independent learners.
We work with families and we share the children’s interests so that at nursery we can provide opportunity’s that build upon and extend the children’s knowledge, experiences and interests.
We value all our children as individuals, and we use different strategies based on the children’s learning needs. We monitor children’s progress and know when to provide support. We work with outside agencies to continually update SEN support for our children.
Impact
At Daisy Chains we opted to use the Development Matters to guide us in our teaching. Below are some of the reasons for our decision….
Development matters can help practitioners to support children’s learning and development, by closely matching what they provide to a child’s current needs. The Characteristics of Effective Learning and the prime and specific Areas of Learning and Development are all interconnected.
Physical Development will be strengthened to include a greater focus on development from birth to reception and on the link between gross and fine motor skills. Literacy will include a stronger emphasis on pre-reception literacy learning, and the link between language comprehension and later reading and writing.
This guidance sets out the pathways of children’s development in broad ages and stages. The actual learning of young children is not so neat and orderly. For that reason, accurate and proportionate assessment is vital. It helps you to make informed decisions about what a child needs to learn and be able to do next.
The way we deliver our curriculum would not be possible without a close partnership with our families. We approach the learning in a co-partnership way, and this begins at the very beginning of the child’s journey at Daisy Chains with a home visit where possible and then working together using ‘Tapestry’ learning journal to get the best outcomes for every child in our setting. From the children’s different starting points they will make good progress throughout all areas of our curriculum,
We fully embrace the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), whilst also enjoying the freedom to implement fresh and creative approaches which are foundations for future learning. Our flexible and innovative approaches to teaching and learning ensure children become confident, rounded individuals who are eager and capable learners.
Children benefit enormously from shared social experiences, and the progress of each child in this and all other areas is monitored closely. The Tapestry online learning journeys share the children’s learning and development with the parents. This enables us to keep parents fully informed and to plan carefully for the future.