How my child will be learning – the 7 areas of learning and development
The EYFS Framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. 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
- 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 to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. The professionals teaching and supporting your chid will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a little bit like a curriculum in primary and secondary schools, but it’s suitable for very young children, and it is designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child’s unique needs and interest. Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outdoors.
Planning Rationale
In January 2016, we changed our planning techniques and recording to ‘In the moment planning’.
We feel this way of planning ensures our setting is child-led. We have completely re-structured our way of storing our equipment in order to ensure the children are given more free choice during play. This gives a more enabling environment and allows the children to explore and investigate through their play.
This system also brings our parents in to our planning structure and allows them a more in-depth sight into their child’s nursery life.
The cycle of observation, assessment, planning, observation is carried out on a moment-by-moment basis.
We aim to have approximately six to eight ‘named focus children’ each week in the Discoverers room and six ‘named focus children’ in the Explorers room.
The parents/carer’s role in our system
If your child is due to be a ‘focus child’ we will give you a parent consultation sheet to fill in the week before. We value the knowledge and understanding you have of your child and would really appreciate it if you would share anything significant happening in your child’s life at that moment with us. Together we can plan activities to meet your child’s needs. This will help us to plan for their future learning and development.
Activities that occur are recorded when the cycle is complete. These records are what make your child’s learning journey. You will then receive information on what your child has learnt during their focus time and also what their next steps to learning are. This is so that you can begin these at home and help practitioners to ‘fill the gap’ in your child’s learning.