Early Years Foundation Stage
The formative foundation years of your child’s school experience are crucial in establishing positive attitudes and confidence, together with skills and knowledge and a love of learning.
At Aspen Heights British School, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum for England and Wales, which details seven key areas of learning from birth to five years old. These include:
- Communication and Language – giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
- Physical Development – providing opportunities for young children to be active and to develop their co-ordination and movement. Children are also taught about the importance of physical activity, and how to make healthy food choices.
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development – helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves and to have confidence in their own abilities; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups.
- Literacy – encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children are given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems and more) to ignite their interest.
- Mathematics – providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction; and to describe shapes, spaces and measures.
- Understanding the World – guiding children to understand their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
- Expressive Arts and Design – enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, and encouraging them to share their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.
Along with the above, our early learners have Arabic lessons four times a week and they study Music and ICT, and they have twice weekly Physical Education (PE) lessons with specialist teachers in Nursery and one swimming lesson and one PE lesson a week in FS2.
Each child is treated very much as an individual, and staff work closely to provide both adult-focused and child-initiated learning experiences to ensure your child makes rapid progress.