Welcome to Early Years
Welcome to Early Years at St Mary's Church of England Academy. Our Early Years has two seperate classes - Star Class and Rainbow Class.
In Rainbow Class we have Miss Bryan and Miss Gray and in Star Class we have Miss Colclough and Mr Garrod. Miss Curtis also works in both classes.
In Early Years we strive for the best for all of our children. Valuing each child's individual strengths, talents and diversity and seek to encourage their full potential. We embrace our children as individuals. We follow the Early Years Fouindation Stage (EYFS) which sets standards for the learning development and care for all children up to 5 years old.
The areas of learning are:
Characteristic of Effective Learning:
Our EYFS curriculum is centred around books with rich vocabulary and topics which develop as the half term progresses. Each half term plan has a continuum of learning objectives for each area of learning on which activities and opportunities to move the children's learning forward. This also includes following the children's interests to plan whole class guided groups and adult-directed play as well as child-initiated play. Early Years children can expect a very busy day at school!
Learning in Early Years takes the form of a whole class input, including Sounds Write Phonics, White Rose Maths, Topic, Literacy as well independent learning in our environment, which is both indoors and outdoors continuous provision. We take great pride in ensuring that our learning environment is enriched with lots of learning opportunities for the children to access during exploring time. Our curriculum is structured in a way, much like our learning environment, to ensure children make progress regardless of starting points. Our teaching delivery is derived from a mix of children's interests and expected knowledge; we build upon children's current knowledge and prior learning.
Each week we also offer curriculum enrichment via PE sessions which are delivered by our Sports Coach; Beliefs and Values using the Emmanuel Project; PSHE following the Jigsaw prigramme; Musich through KAPOW.
Enrichment and Outings in Early Years:
In Early Years we strive to give the children additional enrichment opportunities throughout the year to enhance their learning further.
In the Autumn term we have Little City set up in the hall for a morning of play and learning.
In the Summer term we go to Church Farm for the day to experience encounters with animals and a real tractor ride!
Throughout the year we continuously explore our local area - we regularly visit the church, explore the local forest, visit the Care Home to share our learning and so much more!
