Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS)

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is how the Government and Early Years professionals describe the time in your child’s life between birth and age 5.

This is an extremely important stage as it helps your child get ready for school as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes. The early years’ experiences we offer children at Giant Leap ensure they are happy, active, exciting, fun and secure, and support their development, care and learning needs.

As a registered provider of Early Years Care and Education Giant Leap are required to follow a legal document called the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. The framework explains how and what your child will be learning and supports Early Years professionals to promote healthy development.

Your child will be learning skills, developing new knowledge and showing 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; and
• 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.

At Giant Leap we use these 7 areas to plan your child’s learning and activities. The key people supporting your child will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a little bit like a curriculum in primary schools but it is suitable for very young children.

Guidance to your child’s learning and development in the early years foundation stage.

Created by 4Childen and supported by the Department for Education this guide aims to help parents and carers with learning and caring for their child.

Young children’s brains are like sponges, absorbing knowledge and making new connections faster than any other time in life.

We have got to challenge the misconception that learning can wait for school; pre-school years are a critical time for the brain to develop key skills such as speech and language. Understandably Giant Leap consider having Early Years Teachers on board their team as an absolute essential to support and inspire team members, act as a fantastic role models and monitor the teaching and learning we offer to all our children from birth to five years as well as the impact our teaching has on each individual child’s development.

At Giant Leap we strongly support children through their transitions from nursery to school, by ensuring all children are school ready. We have developed very strong relationships with our local feeder primary schools and their teachers visit us on a regular basis to meet with our pre-schoolers.

We also organise school readiness workshops, which parents are welcome to attend as well as one-to-one meetings with parents.

It is our understanding to see that every child who attends Giant Leap Nursery leaves with a huge amount of confidence in their own abilities and a stimulated, inquisitive mind. They will be ready and prepared for transition to ‘big school’ and the endless opportunities it will bring.