EYFS

The Early Years Foundation Stage, known as EYFS, is the curriculum for children aged 0 – 5 years old and provides the framework for keeping children healthy, safe and secure. At the Coombes School, we work with children from 3 years of age in Foundation 1/Nursery through to 5 years of age in Foundation 2(F2)/Reception. Some children join the Nursery soon after their 3rd birthday and can spend up to 2 years with the Nursery before starting in F2. Other children transfer into F2 from a wide variety of pre-school settings.

Here at the Coombes, we are a creative school and we aim to give the children a wide variety of experiences and learning adventures, which will foster and develop their own love of learning, both inside the classroom and outside in our extensive grounds. The children will have opportunities to play with familiar equipment, explore new concepts and ways of doing things, get to know their peers and work with them in a chosen activity or with the whole class in a co-operative game, build up their concentration and attention skills and acquire new knowledge and understanding for future learning. The adults working with will encourage the children to persevere at activities, try new things perhaps for the first time, and encourage them to feel a sense of achievement in whatever they undertake, discuss different ways of doing things and model their own ideas out loud for children to hear.

The EYFS curriculum has 2 main areas: The first being 'Prime' - consisting of personal, social and emotional development, physical development and communication and language. The second being 'Specific' - comprising literacy, mathematics, understanding the world and expressive arts and design. We focus heavily, especially at the beginning of the school year, on helping children to acquire the knowledge, skills and understanding in the Prime areas. Children are helped to find their own place as part of the class group but also to see themselves as a member of the Coombes family. We give the children opportunities to move around freely outside, to climb, balance and manoeuvre in different ways improving gross motor skills which will also impact on fine motor skills. Talking, speaking and conversing help to foster language development and empower the children to participate and work with others.

The Specific areas of learning follow on from the Prime areas and provide an opportunity for further learning, development and acquisition of knowledge throughout Foundation.