Early Years Foundation Stage

We plan an exciting and challenging curriculum based on our observation of a child’s needs, interests and stages of development across the seven areas of learning to enable the child to achieve and exceed the early learning goals.

All the seven areas of learning and development are important. The three prime areas are:

Communication is at the heart of developing young children's learning. At Jigsaw Nursery, children experience a rich language environment to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves. Children are given opportunities daily to listen and speak in a range of situations and develop key skills for learning at school. This takes place during circle time each morning and everyday activities. At Jigsaw, we follow the Jolly phonics program, and children are taught one letter a week, reviewed weekly by the class teacher and shared with parents in order to extend the child's learning.

Regular physical activity is needed to promote healthy growth of young children. At Jigsaw Nursery children are given opportunities to be active and interactive, to develop their coordination, control and movement. Through practice they develop muscular control and awareness of others in the space they move in. Teachers carefully plan activities and lessons which enable the children to think and use their judgement to solve problems when taking part in physical activities and games. This also helps to build self-confidence and develop their imagination.

At Jigsaw Nursery children are encouraged to develop a positive sense of the themselves and others to form positive relationships and to develop respect for others. Children learn to co-operate, share, have responsibility and consideration for other people, their cultures, beliefs and for property. We foster independence, but ensure that the child also knows when to ask for help. Children from an early age are curious about people, places, animals, plants and everything about them. We teach them to respect and care for one another as well as the environment.

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

Children link sounds and letters and begin to read and write. They are given access to a wide range of reading materials to ignite their interest. In this way, children become confident learners and discover new ways to express themselves.

In the pre-school class, Mathematics is based on practical activities and experiences that are part of our everyday routines. For example: self-registration each morning-counting how many children are present today, how many boys, how many girls, how many more boys are there to girls? Tidying up - sorting toys; baking - weighing ingredients on scales; singing - learning numbers using rhymes. At Jigsaw Nursery children develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers. They learn to describe shapes, space and measures.

Children love exploring, playing and experimenting with a range of media and materials. At Jigsaw Nursery, we encourage children to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas through a variety of activities in art, music and movement and through story telling in our role play area. We also have more structured activities in which staff guide, encourage and help. We believe that taking part and doing is more important than what is made.

Jigsaw Nursery helps children to make sense of their physical world and community by providing opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, and the environment around them. Children have a natural interest in finding out how things work and creating their own models. At Jigsaw Nursery children can explore sand and water, use the watering cans to water the vegetables in our vegetable patch and make mud pies in our mud kitchen. Children also have the opportunity to go on supervised Educational trips outside of the Nursery which we link in with our monthly topic to further extend the children's learning.

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Expressive arts and design
• Understanding the World