Welcome to Early Years
Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) at Marjory Kinnon School. We offer a caring, nurturing and stimulating environment where, through liaison with parents and other agencies, we provide the best start to each individual child’s education.
In the Early Years Department, we are committed to providing a broad, balanced and appropriately differentiated curriculum within the framework of the EYFS curriculum. We work with parents from the beginning to review and set targets for our children to ensure that they achieve as much as they can in all areas of development.
Parent Partnerships
We value parents/carers as important partners in our children’s learning and therefore believe that it is vitally important to develop and maintain positive partnerships with parents/carers throughout the children’s time in school. We believe that good communication between home and school is vital for the pupils' learning and emotional well-being. Each child starts school with a unique set of experiences, gained from home, nursery and in their communities. These experiences are highly valued and enable us to identify next steps in each child’s individual learning journey. As parents/carers, you are the children’s first educators and as such have unique knowledge and understanding of the children’s learning and development. We aspire to combine this with our professional expertise to ensure the children reach their full potential during their time with us.
EYFS Curriculum
The EYFS curriculum is delivered in a range of ways to best support individual pupil progress. Activities are planned and structured to enable the children to develop skills and demonstrate their understanding. We follow the statutory EYFS curriculum which is broken into seven areas:
Prime Areas
Physical Development
Communication and Language
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Specific Areas
Literacy
Mathematics
Expressive Arts and Design
Understanding the World
We follow a thematic way of teaching and learning in the early years; each week we have a chosen book of the week around which all other areas of learning are planned. In the mornings we focus on developing the children's prime learning skills such as literacy, numeracy and communication skills. In the afternoons we focus on specific areas of learning such as the creative arts, PSED and knowledge and understanding of the world. Throughout both the morning and the afternoon the children have opportunities to learn in both the outdoor provision and inside the classroom and have opportunities to work, learn and play as part of small groups, in pairs and 1:1 with an adult.
Throughout the day the children’s skill development and characteristics of effective learning are observed and significant or new moments of learning are recorded. This is evidenced through written observations, photographs, videos or samples of the children’s work. Parents are also encouraged to be involved in this process by recording key learning moments that happen at home. This evidence is collated in the children's learning journals to build a holistic view of each child and the progress that they are making.