Welcome to our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
At St Augustine's Catholic Primary School Nursery and Reception work together as an EYFS unit.
We offer15 or 30 hours free Nursery provision to any eligible 3 and 4 year olds and our Nursery children have a smooth transition into our Reception class.
Our session times for Nursery are:
8.45am - 11.45am
12.15- 3.15pm
or
8.45am - 3.15pm for 30 hours
children can bring a packed lunch or have a hot school dinner.
Our school day for Reception is:
8.45am till 3.15pm
Children can bring a packed lunch or have a free hot school dinner.
Please contact the school office for more information about admissions
Our EYFS Team
As we work in partership your child will be nurtured by our experienced team:
Mrs Molden - EYFS Lead Teacher
Mrs Birks - Teaching Assistant
Miss Dutton - Teaching Assistant
What is the Early Years Foundation Stage?
The Foundation Stage begins at birth and continues throughout the Reception Year, preparing them for learning in Key Stage One.There are seven areas of learning which make up the Foundation Stage Curriculum. These consist of three prime areas and four specific areas.
Prime areas:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED)
Communication and Language (CL)
Physical Development (PD)
Specific areas:
Literacy (L)
Mathematics (M)
Understanding the World (UTW)
Expressive Arts and Design (EAD)
The EYFS curriculum offers a range of experiences, allowing children to make their own discoveries. It encourages independence and ensures that children are active in their learning through play and first hand experiences. Here at St Augustine’s we have a large, well resourced outdoor area that is used daily as an integral part of our provision. Exciting learning opportunities for both indoors and outdoors are carefully planned by our experienced EYFS team. Our stimulating learning environment and dedicated team support children to become independent, resilient lifelong learners.
For more information, please click on your childs class page.
Early Years Foundation Stage - Statement of Intent
Our Early Years Curriculum aims to lay a secure foundation to prepare our children for future learning. Children engage in learning from the very start and we aim for all our children to leave us as happy, confident and skilful communicators who are curious about the world around them.
Our ethos in Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development and therefore we provide a high level of wellbeing to enable the children to be ready to learn. All staff work hard as a team to provide a positive, caring and welcoming atmosphere where the children feel secure. We respect all families and aim to develop a positive relationship with each one.
We believe that all children deserve to be valued as an individual and we are passionate about enabling all children to achieve their full, unique potential. With this in mind, we use observations to assess the individual needs of our children. We then carefully develop our flexible EYFS curriculum that is delivered mainly through a topic based approach and that excites and engages our learners and builds upon their individual needs and interests.
All staff work hard as a team to support all children to meet or exceed our ambitious expectations.
Children in both Nursery and Reception follow the Early Years Statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, published in March 2014 by the DFES. The seven main areas of learning are:
The Prime Areas:-
- Personal, Social and Emotional development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
The Specific Areas:-
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The Characteristics of Effective Learning are at the heart of our EYFS Curriculum and all the learning experiences the children engage in allow us to utilise and develop these skills
Our learning environment both inside and outside is well organised and all resources are accessible to all learners, which develops their ability to access the curriculum independently. Our environment is calm, purposeful and conducive to learning.
We aim to provide every child with the support they need to flourish.
Please find our full EYFS Statement of Intent below.
Tapestry Online Learning Journal
We use an online learning journal called Tapestry. We use Tapestry to record observations of the children whilst they are learning.
Each observation we make will be done directly onto the mobile app and linked into your child’s personal profile. These observations can include notes, photographs and EYFS assessments, characteristics of learning and videos. They can be enhanced by comments from other staff and parents, and each page appears in a pleasing and coherent way.
You will be able to view the complete set of observations as a learning journey, flipping through your single child's observation pages, in time-order, or filtering in flexible ways to access your favourite records. Bookmark your favourites for quick access.
Each child's journey can have individual accounts set up for parents and relatives to access. Parents can comment on new entries and even add their own. You will always be able to access what your child has been doing in Nursery or Reception. You will receive automatic emails generated for parents when new entries are made. These records will also help us make assessments of your children to ensure their learning and development is being met correctly.
Click on the link below to watch a video that shows how to activate your tapestry account