The Early Years Foundation Stage 2024 at Kea Preschool

At Kea Preschool, we are legally required to comply with the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage 2024 and we endeavour to meet all these requirements.

Structure of the EYFS

Kea Preschool provides education for children aged 2-5 in the preschool and from 2-11 years in our wraparound care. Children may start after their 2^nd birthday, not before and if it is in the best interests of the child may stay until they are of statutory school age (exceptionally they may stay longer if they have considerable needs and if agreed with all relevant professionals involved in the child).

At Kea Preschool we adhere to strict ratios of adults to children and this is as follows:

• 2 year olds – 1:4
• 3 and 4 year olds – 1:8
• Breakfast and After School Club –1:4 for 2 year olds and 1:8 for 3 and 4 year olds and 1:10 for school children.

Children may attend for 1 or more sessions a week and choose sessions that are suitable for their child. We accept both 15 and 30 hour funding.

Curriculum

Our curriculum has been revised in line with the new EYFS 2021. We adhere to the statutory framework for the EYFS – early-years-foundation-stage-framework – Follow-Link

and use supplementary materials to support our curriculum e.g. Development matters– Development_Matters_Report_and_illustrations_web__2_.pdf – – Follow-Link and
birth to 5 – https://birthto5matters.org.uk/

At Kea Preschool we allow children to lead their own learning and staff facilitate and extend children’s learning through observations. We value that every child is different and all have different interests and this is where our Key person system comes into effect. Key persons build up strong relationships and plan next steps for children around their interest. Staff ensure children are able to learn whilst both indoors and outdoors in our enriched environment.

Planning

At Kea Preschool we use children’s fascinations and interest to inform planning as we know that children learn best when they are inspired and interested. Staff make observations which are recorded and may be acted upon immediately or may be addressed in the longer term through planning. Key persons plan for key children and through this planning ensure children meet their next steps. Staff observe children carefully and listen to their ideas so that our curriculum reflects both their interests and their needs. For this reason we don’t follow topics but we do follow themes throughout the year. These themes can coincide with special celebrations or to spark children’s curiosity.

Staff observe children’s learning and development throughout the term, and will continue to capture ‘wow moments’ however, each child will be a focus child once every half term. This will allow parents to have regular opportunities to contribute and consult with us. Staff will observe your child extra closely to monitor their interests, their learning, development and progress.

Teaching

There is a balance of child initiated and adult led learning. Adults are skilled at making learning explicit when children are following their own interests. These might be considered to be ‘teachable/wow moments’ but must be used with care and to genuinely add to learning and be considerate of the child’s existing learning and experience. Frequent testing questions, for example, will disengage children.

We believe that the characteristics of effective learning are vital to success. Focussing on skills gives children the opportunity to learn in real life contexts and transfer their skills into different situations. Content or knowledge is important but we believe children need the learning behaviours in order to access content and knowledge effectively.

Assessment

The revised EYFS has allowed us to re consider how we use assessment and the rationale. 2 year old checks are carried out as close to 30 months as possible for all children. We have always valued quality interactions and staff engage in making observations through children’s online learning Journals (Tapestry). We love our adults to be involved in genuine interactions with children and so at times, staff will write up observations on paper and record later. Key workers are allocated to encourage a strong bond and deep knowledge of the children. We know the children and what they need to do next. This intrinsic knowledge is vital to supporting learning but does not always need to be recorded. We assess children against key milestones and check that children are making progress appropriately. We record key observations day to day and these support these judgements. Discussing achievement and progress with parents and carers is essential to understanding the holistic view of the child.

Observations

All observations made of the children are based on quality interactions between children, or children and adults. Observations may include any teaching that has taken place or progress that a child, or group of children, have made or special ‘wow moments’ (see below for more details)

During interaction with children, emphasis is highly placed on using ‘I wonder…’ statements e.g., ‘I wonder if…’, ‘I wonder what…’, ‘I wonder how…’ etc. We feel this approach to questioning is a lot less pressurising than direct questioning and allows children to open up more readily.

The average Early Years Practitioner may have a 1000 interactions and opportunities to plan in the moment each day, which potentially leads to a 1000 tiny steps of development, all adding up to progress over time.

It is impossible for us to record all of these interactions, and rather than attempt to document everything that happens we instead focus on writing less and interacting more.

To ensure that we are still documenting children’s progress and involving parents in their children’s learning we will be using the Focus Child approach.

What are ‘wow moments’?

Within an enabling environment, and with supporting adults, children will learn how to do things independently and when such moments are observed they are referred to as ‘wow moments.’ Wow moments should focus on moments that are important for each child’s personal growth and show off their own hard work.

Wow moments can be something your child does for the first time, skills they acquire, observations they make about the world around them and many other things.

They might have taken a big step forward, or you can celebrate a selection of little ones. Importantly, they shouldn’t just be measured by what you expect for that child’s age.

Wow moment examples:

(child’s name) rode her bike around the garden for the first time without using stabilisers.

(Child’s name) put on her own shoes today.

(Child’s name) made a model of a rocket using kitchen roll tubes.

(Child’s name) was able to finish all the sentences with rhyming words in her bedtime story.

Any moment to celebrate!

Parents are encouraged to share observations of ‘wow moments’ of their child at home by making an observation on their child’s Tapestry account.

Focus children

Staff observe children’s learning and development throughout the term, and will continue to capture ‘wow moments’ however, each child will be a focus child once every half term. This will allow parents to have regular opportunities to contribute and consult with us. By the end of each child’s focus week, they will noticeably have more observations on Tapestry, where quality interactions and learning experiences are recorded. Staff will observe your child extra closely to monitor their interests, their learning, development and progress.

At the end of the week we will either catch up with parents for a quick chat, or add a short summary observation to their Tapestry account.

Working with parents and carers

We value the impact that parents and carers have as their child’s learning. We aim to build strong trusting relationships with parents and carers from the start.

The key person is responsible for being the advocate for the child and is the first port of call for families. Building these strong relationships start right at the very start and our settling sessions enable lots of interactions between staff and parents/carers.

We gain as much knowledge as we can about children before they start with us. We do this through All about me sheets/meetings and if required, home visits. We officially meet with families every term to share progress and achievement. However additional meetings may be required for some families.

We keep families in touch with the life of their child in preschool regularly through newsletters, Tapestry, photos, website and social media and everyday face to face contact.

Culture Capital at Kea Preschool.

In September 2019, the new Ofsted Education Inspection Framework added the term ‘Cultural Capital’. The Early Years Foundation Stage plays an important part here, as strong foundations are built that will make a real difference to a child’s future.

At Kea Preschool, we believe that that Cultural Capital is about giving our children the best possible start to their early education and future success. It is our intention to provide a curriculum which enhances and broadens experiences and opportunities for all children, particularly for our most vulnerable young learners and to provide a culture of curiosity through magical moments: to widen horizons and tap into potential and instil ambition.

Our curriculum is pitched so that it offers a range of experiences which engage, enthuse and enlighten our children.

Adults at Kea Preschool have a wealth of experience which means high quality delivery of our intentions is possible and successful. This includes;

• forging strong relationships,
• working with other professionals,
• working with parents and the wider community,
• meeting children’s needs, learning styles and interests,
• understanding the individual and diverse ways that children develop and learn
• Using staffs knowledge and understanding in order to actively support and extend children’s learning in and across all seven areas of learning.

We communicate with parents face to face regularly, but ‘Tapestry’, our online learning journal helps us to seek parent’s opinions about their child and facilitate shared experiences.

We have always prepared our children (and families) for what comes next. We already receive positive feedback from parents and teachers about how our children are ‘school ready’ when they make the transition to primary school.

We will continually reflect on what we offer our young children to ensure that we remain focused in our ambition to give children the essential knowledge to be educated citizens and to open doors into worlds they didn’t know existed.