Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Nursery & Reception

In the EYFS 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:

• Communication and language;
• Physical development; and
• Personal, social and emotional development

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 develop skills in 4 specific areas.

These are:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the world; and
• Expressive arts and design.

These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning.  Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outdoors.

Alongside this and planning from children’s interests, we also have learning themes for each half term.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a comprehensive framework which sets the standards for learning, development and care of children from birth to five. For each area, the practice guidance sets out the Early Learning Goals. These goals state what is expected that children will know and be able to do at the end of their Reception year of their education. The practice guidance also sets out the likely stages of progress a child makes along their learning journey towards the early learning goals. We ensure that this is used when assessing children and planning their ‘next steps’ of learning.

What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a guide for parents