Early Years Foundation Stage

At St. Mary's we have a Nursery class and a Reception class which together, form our Early Years Class. On entry to our Early Years, our children make a swift start in their learning, particularly in phonics to enable them to make the best possible progress in starting to read. We use Read Write Inc for our phonics and information about our phonics program can be found on our phonics page.

We believe in a knowledge rich curriculum in our Early Years, and our curriculum has been specifically designed to support children's development and prepare them well for Year 1 and beyond.

Our units are:

Under the Sea

Journeys/Transport

Dinosaurs

Growing and Changing

Animals and their Babies

Heroes and Adventurers

During each of these units of learning, we have lots of activities based around the theme during our busy learning (Continuous provision) as well as visit and trip opportunities. For example, reception children visit Sedgewick Museum in Cambridge to see some real dinosaurs and fossils during our Dinosaur topic. These units lay the skills and knowledge the children will require to access the curriculum in KS1.

We have a Forest School trained member of staff, and the children enjoy Woodland Wednesday where all learning is linked to the outdoors; the children look forward to this time each week!

Learning across the week is timetabled with continuous provision, following the 7 areas of learning set out below, along with discrete teaching sessions for:

Phonics

PE

RE

English

Maths

All staff in the EYFS follow the statutory framework which covers the following broad areas of learning:

Communication and Language

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Physical Development

Literacy

Mathematics

Understanding the World

Expressive Art and Design