Early Years at The Radstone 

"Play is the work of childhood" Jean Piaget

Our approach is underpinned by the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework which explains how and what children will be learning to support their healthy development.  At The Radstone, children in the Early Years will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.

Prime Areas
Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:

• Communication and language: listening, attention, understanding and speaking.
• Physical development: moving, handling, health and self-care.
• Personal, social and emotional development: self-confidence, self- awareness, managing feelings, behaviour and making relationships

We recognise that these prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.

Specific Areas
As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

• Literacy: reading and writing.
• Mathematics: numbers, shape, space and measures.
• Understanding the world: people, communities, technology and the world.
• Expressive arts and design: exploring and using media and materials and being imaginative.

These 7 areas are used to plan for children’s learning and activities. The Foundation Stage team will make sure that the activities are suited to each child’s unique needs and interests. In addition to our daily classroom activities our timetable enhancements will provide the children with extra opportunities to develop in these areas, for example, through weekly Dough Gym, Cooking, PE, Music, Creative Writing, Kinetic Letters.

Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking. These are known as the ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’ and will be used to gain information on the way in which each child learns.  Activities are then tailored to meet children’s needs.

The Early Years curriculum involves a robustly planned mixture of whole class and small group formal teaching across basic skills; adult facilitated activities to maximize language and thinking and exploratory activities which are carefully planned to provide interactive, rich learning experiences.

Outdoor learning is a fundamental part of the curriculum experience and ‘Forest School’ activities with a trained leader take place each week.