EYFS Curriculum

Follow our signpost to find out about our key values that help us to build our exciting EYFS curriculum. Click on each part of the signpost to find out more.

Children at the Heart of Everything

Our Tenacres EYFS curriculum is designed with our children at the heart of it.

We work creatively to design, plan and implement a curriculum which will provide broad and balanced learning experiences and will help every child to reach their full potential.

Our Tenacres Early Years team are full of passion and excitement for teaching and learning. Our children are the heart beat of our day. We love the chitter chatter of conversations, the buzz of social interaction, the wild imaginations and the inquisitive and enquiring minds that lead a magical learning journey to unravel the mystery and wonder of the world around us.

Our specialist subject is our children! We intend to become experts on each child, so that we know how to help them learn, develop and enjoy school life.

Our key Early Years Values are based upon this, and help us to design a curriculum that is ambitious for all children; to help every child make the most progress that they are capable of in their learning and development. Through focusing the curriculum on our children and what they can do, we can ensure that it is carefully planned and sequenced, allowing all children to acquire and build the skills and knowledge to establish the foundations for the next phase of learning and successful life-long learning.

Curiosity is the Key

When designing our curriculum we believe that curiosity is the key to unlock an exciting and inspiring learning adventure that will motivate our children to learn. We plan meaningful and interesting activities and experiences and ensure that there are opportunities to explore a range of high quality resources and provision to promote natural curiosity and enquiry for children’s learning and development.

Play is our work! We have lots of fun learning through play, building on children’s ideas and experiences. We love to be learning both indoors and outdoors. Our EYFS curriculum is interactive and challenging, allowing children to develop perseverance, resilience and a real love of learning.

Let’s Talk

Our curriculum is built around creating confident communicators which in turn will lead to confident and inquisitive learners. With this in mind, building a language rich curriculum is one of our key priorities.

Though our nurturing learning environment, with an emphasis on ‘let’s talk’, we aim to seize every opportunity to use language, through interacting and playing with children so that we can promote the development of speech and language skills.

Our Day

Our day is made up of group sessions, focus activities and lots of child initiated learning.

Phonics and maths are taught explicitly everyday, and the other areas of learning are all interconnected and taught through everyday continuous provision.

We also enjoy PE sessions, music, computing and Forest School sessions. We are very busy bees in Reception, always learning!

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework which has been revised 2021. This caters for learning and development from birth to five, ensuring seamless transitions from pre-school. Through carefully planning and sequencing our curriculum we aim for all children to acquire and build the skills and knowledge to establish the foundations for the next phase of learning and successful lifelong learning.

Our EYFS practise is shaped by the four guiding principles:

• Every child is a unique child
• Positive relationships
• Enabling environments
• Learning and development

The EYFS is made up of seven areas of learning:

Prime Areas of Learning:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development.
• Physical Development.
• Communication and Language.

Specific Areas of Learning:

• Literacy.
• Mathematics.
• Understanding the World.
• Expressive Arts and Design.

These areas are underpinned by the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning; the ways in which the child engages with other people and their environment. These are:

• Playing and exploring.
• Active Learning.
• Creating and thinking critically.

At the end of your child’s EYFS year they will be assessed against the 17 Early Learning goals.

Please find out more about the educational programmes, what we are learning in Reception and the end of year Early Learning Goals:

• EYFS Development Matters Statements
• Parents’Guide: What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage
• EYFS Educational Programmes

More information about maths and phonics can be found on our subject pages.