The Early Years curriculum can seem hard to understand at first glance, especially to anyone not familiar with a play based curriculum. This link gives a clear understanding of what we are teaching your children and what exciting learning opportunities you can look for as adults.
Cooking is an amazing activity to do with any child. It has numerous positive impacts across a range of areas in your child’s learning. We strongly recommend reading the attached article to find out more about this wonderful learning opportunity.
Below are a nice variety of links to songs and stories that may interest your child. Please remember that at this age it is recommended that children’s screen time (TVs, computers and mobile devices) should be very limited, but these songs may provide a supplement or starting point to other activities you do with your child at home.
Phonics
Activities
Virtual trips
Smart School Snacks – Children should bring a healthy snack to eat at break time such as fruit or vegetables or other nutritional snacks. We recommend the children bring a healthy snack instead of items such as sweets, crisps and chocolate.
Communication- Their are many ways the school tries to stay in touch with parents. In an effort to reduce paper waste our main form of communication is via the email address you gave to the school. We also have an F1 twitter feed, whole school Facebook page, Tapestry (see separate tab). If you need to contact us then please feel free to talk to us before or after school or send us an email. For any urgent communication please call the school office as we may not check our email during the teaching part of the day.
Shoes- The children need to come to school in trainers everyday as F1 has a very active learning environment and the children will be learning both indoors and outdoors. The children need to bring a pair of wellies(gumboots) which will stay at school. Please ensure your child’s boots are named clearly. Flips Flips are not recommended.
Spare clothes- Please send at least two sets of spare clothes and we will keep them in their trays at school. We recommend all clothes sent into school are labelled as this reduces the chance of clothing being misplaced.
Wet weather gear – Unless it is stormy or severe winds children are allowed to play outside in any weather. Please help us in this by providing waterproofs during the monsoon months and warm coats during the winter.
Library- The children will have a library session every Wednesday. They will be provided with a school library bag please keep the library books in the bag while travelling between home and school.
P.E – P.E. for F1 will be on Monday and Thursday. Children will need a school PE T.shirt, shorts and a tracksuit for when the weather gets colder. They must wear trainers for both PE sessions. Please label the P.E kit.
Music- Every Wednesday the children will explore using different musical instruments and movements with our music teacher Mrs Elizabeth Pratten.
Outdoor Learning – Outdoor Learning will begin in Term 2. Please see the separate page for more details.
Twitter– Please check our class Twitter account to find out about all the interesting activities we will be exploring at school. Our class account name is TBSFoundation1.
Tapestry – This is the innovative, interactive online learning journal. Tapestry records all the learning and fun of children’s early years education. We will require your email address to register you in Tapestry which will enable you to have access to your child’s journal. Please see the separate tab for more information on Tapestry
The Early Years curriculum aims to help children meet seventeen early learning goals (ELGs) spread across a range of seven broad areas. These are:
The focus throughout the Early Years is on the first of these three, though all seven are seen as important.
As your children work towards these goals, they advance through different overlapping age bands or phases, gaining increasing mastery before moving up to the next age band and eventually the ELG. It is worth remembering that not all children gradually increase in ability and many will have a short period of seeming stagnation before demonstrating a rapid period of development. The age bands the children will move through within the Foundation 1 year are normally:
You can see the age bands are very large and some cover nearly a period of two years, so the process from emerging to developing and finally secure can take some time.
This is only a brief overview of our curriculum and if you do want more detail you are always welcome to come in and talk to us. All our teachers are passionate about the Early Years and would be happy to share with you!
Obviously within the Early Years environment we do not expect children to be sitting down and writing all the time. Instead Early Years practitioners document the learning of our children through regular observations of them. These may take the form of written observations, photos, videos or a combination of the three.
Tapestry is an online platform that provides an easy tool to perform these observations as well as a secure environment to store them in. However its main advantage is that it allows you as parents (and anyone else you choose such as grandparents) to be involved in your child’s learning journey. You can see all the observations that we have taken of your child, comment on them and even upload observations of your own for us to see.
When you log on to Tapestry you will be able to see your child’s learning journal and read any observations that have been made. On each of these observations you will have a comment from the teacher detailing what happened in the learning experience. You will usually also have a photo or video and an assessment letting you know which ELG or ELGs the experience was working towards and at what age band the child was working at during that event.
We find Tapestry to be an amazing tool, both in it’s ability to help us provide the best education possible to your children and also in letting you have a more in depth knowledge of what your children are doing when they are at school. As always, if you have any questions or technical problems with Tapestry then please come and see us.
‘Nature offers us a sanctuary, a place where we can find peace and wonder. It is not limited by time or confined by walls, and even today we cannot control it completely. It is much larger and older than we are, and its rhythms resonate deep within us. Nature is where we are from and where we belong, and our survival is intricately linked to its existence. For children it is the greatest playground of all, with all its diverse structures, smells, textures, its creatures of all shapes and sizes, its abundant plants, some edible, others toxic. Nature offers a myriad of opportunities for risk taking, for a wealth of learning and amazement, and for freedom, separate from the adult world.’ (Houghton and Worroll 2016)
At it’s heart, outdoor learning is a desire to foster children’s love for and experience of the outdoor world. Through this we are able to still cover many of the essential skills within the curriculum as well as our learner skills. The aim is that through regular and well planned interaction with an outdoor space, children will become more confident learners, better team players and also learn about the world around them.
Foundation 1 plan to use our outdoor space in Chobar every week on a Friday. Children will arrive at school as normal and return in time for lunch. During sessions there is a good chance children will get wet or muddy and so children should come to school in clothing that takes both this and the weather into account.
During these sessions children will get time to freely explore the world around them. They will be provided with tools such as small spades, string, buckets and cloth in order to further enhance their learning opportunities. Carefully supervised and restricted use to some more complex pieces of equipment such as mallets and saws will also be available, once we are more familiar with the area.
There will usually be a single teacher lead activity as well free play and this will explore nature based art and craft/science or teaching new skills such as using the mallet safely.
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