Early Years Foundation Stage

Children are active learners, eager to discover and interact with people who share their lives. At PAVILION PREP our aim is to support each child’s natural curiosity by providing a wide range of experiences, combined with plenty of positive interactions with well-trained practitioners.

Their Future in Our Hands

Through our daily curriculum each child experiences exposure to a wide range of learning.

Curriculum

We fully embrace the ethos that the curriculum should be child centred.  We respect their individual interests and learning styles and ensure the curriculum is developmentally appropriate.

We offer a range of carefully balanced experiences that focus on:

  • Developing creative thinking
  • Language skills
  • Mathematical and scientific understanding
  • Using imagination
  • Extending physical skills
  • Experiencing books, stories songs and music
  • Practising decision making and problem solving
  • Promoting care and concern for others
  • Respect for the environment as well as opportunities for fun and friendship

For our youngest infants we offer sensitive baby care through the individual attention of caring staff who nurture their natural curiosity and support development such as learning to feed themselves, learning to crawl or walk and learning to explore the world around them. We follow individual sleep and feeding patterns to maintain consistency with home life and to foster a feeling of security.

For toddlers and older children we offer experiences in a wide variety of play and learning activities building on their natural desire to make relationships, explore and discover. We encourage their developing social awareness, and help their growing self-esteem, self-confidence and independence.

We use careful observations and regular assessments of each child’s development to plan for their play and provide experiences and resources that create a desire to investigate and learn, using their individual interests as our starting points. These findings are  documented in their individual Learning Journals and assist us when giving feedback to you at our pupil progress meetings and end of year summary.

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage including the Seven Areas of Learning:

  • Communication and language:

Giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.

  • Physical development:

Providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food.

  • Personal, social and emotional development:

Helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.

  • Literacy:

Encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.

  • Mathematics:

Providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures. Physical activity and making healthy choices in relation to food.

  • Understanding the world:

Guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

  • Expressive arts and design

Enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

Through the above seven areas we hope to explore each and every child’s individual journey whilst observing and supporting every milestone throughout their education.

Our outdoor play areas are a vital resource supporting each child’s fast growing physical abilities and challenging their skills whilst providing them with the sense of freedom and opportunities to be at one with nature, essential elements for early childhood.

The setting is resourced with materials that provide opportunities for developing confidence, becoming problem solvers, making relationships, exploring and discovering and allowing the children to progress at their own pace within an environment that respects them as individuals.