Aims & Activities
Educational Programme
Swimbridge Pre-school uses the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) .The Early Years Foundation Stage sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe.
The EYFS seeks to provide:
- quality and consistency in all early years settings
- a secure foundation through learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly.
- partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers
- equality of opportunity and anti discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported.
The EYFS specifies requirements for learning and development and for safeguarding children and promoting their welfare.
Four guiding principles should shape practice in early years settings:
- every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
- children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships
- children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
- children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.
The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities. (SEND).
AREAS OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
There are seven areas .
Three areas are the prime areas
Communication and language - the development of children's spoken language under pins all 7 areas of learning and development.
Physical development - physical activity is vital in children's all round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives.
Personal, social and emotional development- this is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives and is fundamental to their cognitive development
These prime areas are supported by 4 other areas-
Literacy - it is crucial to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions - language comprehension and word-reading.
Mathematics - developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically.
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, place, technology and the environment.
Expressive arts and design - the development of children's artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity
Our aspirations for our children can be found in our policies section.
In planning and guiding activities we must reflect on the ways that children learn and show this in our practice. Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are :
· Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things and have a go
· Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy achievements
· Creative and thinking critically – children have their own ideas, make links between ideas and develop strategies for doing things.
