Welcome to EYFS!!

Curriculum

At Chiseldon Primary and Nursery School, we offer a vibrant, nurturing environment where our Nursery and Reception children thrive together through play-based learning. Our unique free flow continuous provision allows children to choose their own learning paths, enabling them to explore their interests in a fun and engaging way. With adult-directed tasks tailored to their individual needs, we ensure that every child's learning is both meaningful and relevant.

Our curriculum covers the seven key areas of learning:

1: Personal, Social and Emotional development; "...involves 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 behaviours in groups; and have confidence in their own abilities." EYFS 2024

2: Physical Development; "...involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their coordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical opportunity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food." EYFS 2024

3: Communication and Language; "....development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich learning environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations" EYFS 2024

4: Literacy; "...development involves 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." EYFS 2024

5: Mathematics; "... involves 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 measure." EYFS 2024

6: Understanding the World; "... involves 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." EYFS 2024

7: Expressive Arts and Design; "... involves 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." EYFS 2024

We believe in fostering independence and a strong sense of community, which is why our children actively participate in whole school OPAL play times and lunches. Here, they not only learn valuable skills but also forge friendships that last a lifetime. Join us in creating joyful learning experiences for your little ones!

Monster Phonics

We teach Systematic Synthetic Phonics through a scheme called Monster phonics which is a multisensory and visual method which is LOVED by our children the feedback has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic!! WOOHOO

Each sound or phoneme has a corresponding action and rhyme to us remember and to help with letter formation. We focus on making sure we can identify/ match  the letter or grapheme with its sound (phoneme) and action.  

We can hear the blend between these sounds to make words so for example c-a-t blends to say cat we call this oral blending. This skill ensures that children have the correct foundations to read. If they can hear the sounds in words they will then be able to write them!! Reading before writing. 

However we do expose and encourage writing with correct letter formation and word building. 

The children will meet various 'Monsters' along the way ( dont worry they are all kind) who will help them with sounds and show patterns within our English Language... Some may even try to trick us.  

Learning to read and write is so much fun!! But it is confusing especially as adults so if you are ever confused or need it taking through or even want our resources, please just ask. We are one big team!! 

Mastering Number

In EYFS we use a programme called Mastering Number to create confidence in number. We focus on providing a secure base for children's number knowledge so the application and abstract parts of maths can built upon this. 

Mastering number uses Number blocks as a stimulus (who doesn't love number blocks?) and uses practical application of skills to embed them into the child's real world sense of self.  

We focus on number recognition, subitising (looking at the pattern and recognising how many) calculation, and composition (how numbers are made up) as key components within number. 

If you have any questions about number and the teaching of this, please let us know :) 

Happy subitising :)