The Early Years Foundation Stage
GROW, EXPLORE, DISCOVER
What is the EYFS?
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers the stages of development from birth to the end of the child’s first year in school (reception year). These first years see the greatest growth and learning for your child so giving children the right tools as a starting point is essential for their development.
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Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured; children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships;
Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers; and children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates. Taken from the EYFS Statutory Framework 2014
Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first.
These are:
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These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning. As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas.
These are:
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The EYFS is based on 4 overarching principles which shape good practice:
Communication and language
Physical development
Personal, social and emotional development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive arts and design
Educational Programmes
Communication and Language
The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children's language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures
Personal, Social and Emotional
Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive 9 relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children, they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.
Physical Development
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives7. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination, which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
Literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).
Mathematics
Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding - such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting - children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Understanding the World
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.
Expressive Arts and Design
The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe.
When thinking about any type of learning it is very important to consider the essential skills your child should be developing in order to benefit and grasp formal learning. These include:
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1. Visual Perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret what the brain is seeing. This is a very important skill for learning to read, write and do mathematics and should be developed between the ages of 3 and 7. Visual perception includes visual discrimination, visual memory, perception of shapes, and visual analysis and synthesis.
2. Auditory Perception
Auditory perception is the ability to interpret and attach meaning to sound. It is important for reading, spelling and language development. Auditory perception includes auditory discrimination, auditory memory, auditory foreground-background perception, and auditory analysis and synthesis.
3. Listening Skills
This includes auditory perception, but also the ability to understand and follow instructions. Learning to listen is a very important skill, not just for learning to read, but for coping with all aspects of schooling.
4. Speaking Skills
Language involves listening and speaking. Children must develop their speaking skills in order to learn to read and write, understand the world, convey information, socialize, express their feelings and play. Well-developed auditory skills are a prerequisite for developing good speaking skills.
5. Gross-Motor Skills
Children develop their large muscles before their small muscles. The first few years of a child’s life should be packed with opportunities to develop these gross-motor skills.
6. Fine-Motor Skills
Fine-motor activities build the coordination between the eyes and the small muscles in the fingers and hands. This is crucial for learning to write. When a child has well-developed fine-motor skills they are able to cut, hold a pencil between the thumb, index and middle finger, dress themselves, begin to experiment with writing, and perform other important skills.
7. Creativity and Thinking Skills
Creativity is a vital skill that must be stimulated over time. It is not just about art, but also about thinking and problem-solving, skills that are necessary throughout life.
8. Emergent Reading Skills
Before a child learns to read, they must learn important pre-reading skills such as rhyming, visual memory, print awareness, listening comprehension, letter knowledge and auditory perception (including phonological awareness).
9. Emergent Mathematics Skills
Children begin developing pre-mathematical skills early on. These are skills such as an emerging number sense. and a concept of measurement, space and shape.
10. Emergent Writing Skills
Emergent writing involves developing base skills such as visual perception, pencil grip, fine-motor skills, patterning skills and others.
This may seem like a lot of skills, however these skills are developed everyday through play and in order for your child to begin reading they must have developed their auditory and perception skills.
When your child has adequate informal learning through play, the formal learning naturally becomes easier when they are ready for it.
When your child has inadequate learning through play and too many forced formal skills, they suffer later on in school when the gaps start to show and it becomes apparent that foundational skills are missing.