“Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to their full potential. A child’s experience in the early years has a major impact on their future life Chances.” Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 

Early childhood is the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives. It is not just a preparation for the next stage but is vitally important in itself. For young children there is no distinction between work and play. Learning for young children is a rewarding and enjoyable experience in which they explore, investigate, discover, create, rehearse, repeat, revise and consolidate their developing knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes. During the early years, many of these aspects of learning are brought together effectively through playing and talking.

The Team

Hello and welcome to Early Years

In Early Years we have the following staff:

Hillbourne Primary School EYFS Curriculum Statement

Our INTENTION in our Early Years Foundation Stage is to ensure that every child feels, safe, happy and secure by creating an inclusive and welcoming ethos in which every child is valued and treated as a unique learner.   This will enable every child to make progress and achieve excellence in their learning. 

We intend to set the foundations which will help our children to become emotionally and physically healthy and, through their ‘have-a-go’ attitude, will have the tools to embrace challenges and overcome barriers.   Upon these foundations, we strive to build confident life-long learners who have a thirst for discovering and finding out. 

Our children will develop the skills of independence, resourcefulness and resilience within their learning and these will be encompassed within the school’s three values of be ready, be respectful and be safe.  

Our curriculum is set on the principle that children learn best when they are settled and comfortable within the learning environment and that a child-centred approach for young children is crucial for their development and success.  Therefore, our teaching and learning is carefully crafted to reflect the needs and interests of our children, with imagination and creativity woven throughout.  Our practitioners are constantly evaluating and reviewing their practise to ensure excellence across the Early Years.

Every practitioner is determined to ensure that our children are ready for the next stage of their learning: in our pre-school we make sure our children are prepared for Reception; in Reception we make sure our children our ready for Key Stage One.  Thus our curriculum has a clear and strong drive around developing the Prime Areas, with a particular focus on Communication and Language.  Running parallel with this, is the solid and robust teaching of the Specific areas of learning in which we aim that all of children leave EYFS having achieved the Early Learning Goal in reading and having fostered a love of reading in order to open them up to the world around them.