Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

At Georgeham CofE Primary School, we are passionate about early years education! We have purposefully designed our inside and outside learning environments to meet the needs of our reception children (Big Acorns - 4-5 year olds), ensuring that we give children the very best opportunities to engage with each other, adults, and the environment.

Our pre-school, Little Acorns, caters to children from 2 to 4 years old, providing a nurturing and stimulating environment for our youngest pupils.

Our high-quality learning environment and resources promote curiosity and child-led learning. Provision is carefully crafted, targeting children’s next steps while tapping into their interests. Children experience playing and exploring, active learning, and opportunities to create and think critically to support their learning in the following areas:

• Prime areas of learning: communication and language, personal social and emotional development, and physical development.
• Specific areas of learning: literacy, mathematics, understanding the world, expressive arts, and design.

Both the indoor and outdoor environments provide children with purposefully designed learning opportunities and the possibility of self-selecting resources. Everything is clearly labelled with photographs at the child’s height!

Outdoor learning environment includes:

• Large scale construction: opportunities to construct imaginative structures on a large scale with a range of resources from tyres and blocks to steering wheels.
• Sand pit and digging equipment.
• Water play: including guttering, jugs, and containers.
• Bikes and scooters.
• Resources to explore the environment: bug hunting, magnifying glasses, etc.

Indoor learning environment includes:

• Home corner: often redesigned to match a key text or learning theme.
• A writing garden: desks and writing resources in a creative space.
• Small world play: cars, people, buildings.
• Small scale construction blocks.
• A sand trunk.
• A sensory space.
• Creative reading space.
• Maths area: full of counting bears and numerical representations.
• Creative arts: paints, pens, pastels.
• Junk modelling.

Our approach ensures that reception children (Big Acorns) at Georgeham CofE Primary School, including those in Little Acorns, have a rich and engaging early years experience that lays a strong foundation for their future learning.