At The Hampshire School Chelsea, the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum highlights the importance of what children learn as well as how they learn. The Early Years Foundation Stage gives us a developmental curriculum framework to base the structure of learning against. Every child is unique and develops differently therefore, as professionals, we work carefully to pay attention to individual learners through personalised learning and ensure each play and learning opportunity within school, is tailored to the unique aspects of each child. Teachers take great care to assess and move pupils forward setting individual targets which are shared with the children.

We explore learning though a range of topics that spark the children’s interest. We then use their enthusiasm to thread through key learning in an exciting and child led manner. Our delivery is balanced between planned purposeful adult led activities and child initiated learning though play based experiences. The children explore the 7 areas of learning throughout the day having plenty of opportunity to access the curriculum in a cross curricular fashion, both inside and outside the classroom. Learning through exploration and play is essential to our Early Years ethos therefore we encourage the demonstration of the ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’. The characteristics underpin three essential indicators of learning through play: ‘Playing and Exploring’, ‘Active learning’ and ‘Creating and Critical Thinking’.

Our aim is to spark curiosity and love for life-long learning and wish to extend this as the pupils move up through the school.