Our Early Years Leader is Sarah Horsman

At Fulbourn Primary School, the Early Years curriculum and environment provides a rich variety of engaging and playful learning opportunities. At Fulbourn, we aim to:

• Provide a safe, challenging, stimulating and caring environment which is sensitive to the needs of the child, including children with additional needs.
• Provide a broad, balanced, relevant and creative curriculum that will set in place firm foundations for further learning and development in Key Stage 1 and beyond.
• Use and value what each child can do, assessing their individual needs and helping each child to progress.
• Enable choice and decision making, fostering independence and self-confidence.
• Work in partnership with parents and carers and value their contributions ensuring that all children, irrespective of ethnicity, culture, religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties, disabilities, gender or ability achieve their full potential.
• Provide opportunities whereby children experience a challenging and enjoyable programme of learning and development.
• Provide inclusive experiences for all children, whatever their needs.

The freedom to learn indoors and outdoors is fundamental to early development.  We are fortunate to have a multi-purpose outdoor space dedicated to Early Years provision, enabling children to move between the two environments as they wish.  Plenty of time to explore and play, combined with focused teaching each day enables our youngest to thrive and progress, developing crucial play and social skills.  

Throughout the school day children take part in adult directed learning and also have the opportunity to follow their own interests and lead their own learning in ‘Busy Learning’ time.

During ‘Busy Learning’ time children can independently access the continuous and enhanced provision. Adults skilfully support this child-initiated play, interacting and moving children’s learning forward. Adult Directed learning takes place throughout the year and is a designated time to address specific learning with the children. This can be as a whole-class, small group work or 1:1.

Our little ones feel happy, safe and secure as a result of a carefully managed transition from pre-school, close communication with families and strong relationships among professionals.

We thoroughly enjoy learning with our children in Early Years, not least because we work hard to maintain a stimulating and fun learning environment. Learning each week follows the children’s interests providing exciting topics, and inspiring opportunities to explore and to build new skills in reading, writing and maths.  We feel privileged to share in the serious fun!

The Early Years Foundation Stage

We use the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (2022) as our base for the opportunities and provision that we provide to children in their first year of school. There is a great emphasis on learning through direct, first-hand experiences in a play-based environment. This allows children to develop the skills needed in preparation for their National Curriculum education that commences in Year 1.

The EYFS framework explains how and what children will be learning to support their healthy development and provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.

Our Curriculum is based upon 7 areas of learning, and these are divided into two further areas – The Prime and The Specific Areas of learning.

The Prime Areas

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development through which children gain confidence and self-awareness, the ability to manage their feelings and behaviour and learn about building effective relationships with others.

• Communication and Language through which children learn about listening, attention, understanding and speaking.

• Physical Development which emphasises gross and fine motor skills in moving and handling, as well as health and self-care.

The Specific Areas

• Literacy: Early reading and writing skills, explicit daily teaching of phonics, recognising common and irregular words, reading and understanding simple sentences and talking about what they have read; children will begin to use their phonic knowledge to build and write words and construct simple sentences.

• Mathematics: Based around counting reliably from 1-20, understanding number order and beginning simple addition and subtraction; children will also experience solving mathematical problems by talking about shapes, weight, capacity, time, money, halving and measuring and comparing everyday objects.

• Understanding the World: Enables children to base their learning on what they understand of the world around them through talking about past and present events within their own families, being aware of the differences and similarities between others and among families, communities and traditions; children will observe the differences in their environment, learn about plants and animals and talk about changes. They will also use a range of different technologies, selecting and using them for different purposes.

• Expressive Arts and Design: Children will sing songs and create their own music and dance. They explore a range of materials, tools and techniques to look at different colours, design and texture in their artwork and are given opportunities to be imaginative through art, music, role play and stories.