Our Foundation Stage lays firm foundations which nurture and shape lifelong learners, equipped with a thirst for knowledge ready for their journey of discovery and growth.

In our Early Years Foundation Stage we aim to provide a welcoming and nurturing environment. We realise that when most children join our Foundation Stage One (nursery), it is the first time they have left their home setting. Our FS1 staff are adept at ensuring that they ease their transition through high quality personal and social care.

Most of our children then move into Foundation Stage 2 (FS2), although we have children from other nurseries joining us too.

Throughout their time in the Foundation Stage, we strive to create a stimulating environment through a play based curriculum where children are given the opportunity to lead their learning and explore their interests.

Through carefully selected activities that challenge the children’s learning the staff are experienced to question and develop children’s abilities to become critical thinkers.

OUR CURRICULUM

At Phillimore, we believe in shaping and educating our children to become citizens for the 21st century by broadening their minds and experiences. We do this through our Global Curriculum, which comprises of 6 themes:

• Peace and Conflict
• Human Rights
• Identity and Diversity
• Power and Governance
• Social Justice and Equity
• Sustainable Development

In the EYFS we cover 3 of the global themes:

• Human Rights
• Identity and Diversity
• Sustainable Development

Each term, EYFS shape their learning around a topic which is enriched with a variety of quality core-texts, trips and provision. We also make strong connections with global learning and citizenship. The staff also shape children’s learning through their interests. Along with this, we use Development Matters to ensure that children receive an age appropriate curriculum based on the seven areas of learning in EYFS:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

PHONICS

At Phillimore we start teaching phonics in Nursery and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. We encourage the children to use phonics throughout their learning, and regularly promote phonics development within the resources and provision.

We encourage children to take home reading books and key words to work with their families for five minutes every day. Children are assessed against the Early Learning Goals before moving on to National Curriculum levels.

Further information about how we teach phonics can be found by following the https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ link.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The classroom learning environment is the ‘Third Teacher’. It supports us all in giving messages about our ethos and values and celebrates high quality learning. Through our learning environment, we provide children with a stimulating, enriching and creative learning experience.

All of our classrooms are arranged so that children can move freely, accessing the resources and provision that suits their needs and interests. The equipment and resources are planned around the seven areas of development, and the global theme or topic.

An important part of the Early Years curriculum requires us to provide children with ample opportunity for outdoor learning and malleable play, e.g. water, mud, dough etc. Children are entitled to access our outdoor areas.

PARENTS

At Phillimore School, we know that parents are children’s first educators and we value being partners with them in their child’s education.

We ensure that parents are fully involved in their child’s education by:

• Regularly sharing children’s progress with parents and valuing the ongoing contributions to this from parents/carers.
• Giving parents/carers the opportunity to take part in their child's education and share their interests and expertise.
• Delivering workshops to share our practice, ethos and ideas with parents/carers e.g. Phonics demonstrations and Early Readers workshops.
• Promoting a love of reading for parents/carers to read with their child.
• Opportunities for parents/carers to participate in learning through celebrations.