At Ainslie Wood, we believe that the Early Years should give every child a happy, secure and inspiring start to their education. Nursery and Reception provide the foundations upon which children’s future learning is built, developing not only early knowledge and skills, but also confidence, curiosity, independence and a genuine enthusiasm for learning.

Our Early Years curriculum is shaped by the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework and is designed around how young children learn best: through relationships, purposeful play, exploration, conversation and meaningful first-hand experiences.

Children are encouraged to investigate, question, create, practise and discover. Adults carefully observe children’s learning, identify appropriate next steps and create opportunities that allow children to develop their understanding through both adult-led teaching and child-initiated exploration.

We want children to become active participants in their learning from the very beginning of their time at Ainslie Wood.

Our Early Years Curriculum

The EYFS curriculum is organised into seven interconnected areas of learning:

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

The first three are known as the prime areas because they provide essential foundations for children’s development and future learning. The remaining four specific areas allow children to apply and extend these foundations as their knowledge, confidence and understanding grow.

In Nursery, particular attention is given to developing communication, relationships, independence and physical development alongside children’s growing understanding of the world around them. In Reception, these foundations continue to develop while increasingly supporting children’s learning in early reading, writing and mathematics and preparing them for the transition into Year 1.

Learning Through Exploration and Experience

Young children learn by doing.

Our Early Years environments are therefore designed to give children rich opportunities to explore and experience their learning rather than simply being told about it. Children learn indoors and outdoors through carefully chosen resources, practical challenges, imaginative play, investigation and interaction with adults and other children.

Experiences might involve building, creating, role play, observing changes in nature, investigating materials, preparing food, telling stories, solving practical problems or exploring the local environment.

These experiences allow children to make connections between new learning and the world around them. Adults skilfully join children in their learning, introducing new vocabulary, asking questions, modelling thinking and providing appropriate challenge.

Children’s interests are an important part of this process. By getting to know each child well, practitioners can use their fascinations and experiences as starting points for learning while also deliberately introducing children to new ideas, vocabulary, stories, cultures and experiences that broaden their understanding of the world.

Our aim is not simply to keep children busy; every part of our provision is designed to support purposeful learning and development.

Communication and Language

Communication sits at the heart of our Early Years curriculum.

Throughout Nursery and Reception, children are immersed in language through stories, conversation, songs, rhymes, imaginative play and interactions with adults and their peers. Adults deliberately introduce and revisit new vocabulary and encourage children to express their ideas, explain their thinking and listen carefully to others.

Developing strong spoken language gives children an essential foundation for later reading, writing and learning across the curriculum.

Early Reading and Little Wandle

Learning to read is one of the most important foundations we can give a child.

At Ainslie Wood, we teach early reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, our systematic synthetic phonics programme. Phonics begins in the Early Years and continues through Key Stage 1, giving children a consistent and carefully sequenced approach to learning how sounds are represented by letters.

Children are explicitly taught to recognise sounds, blend them together to read words and use their growing phonic knowledge with increasing independence.

In Reception, children also take part in carefully structured reading practice using books that are closely matched to the phonics they have been taught. This allows children to develop decoding, fluency, understanding and confidence while experiencing success as readers.

Alongside the systematic teaching of phonics, we place enormous importance on developing a love of reading. Children encounter a rich range of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction texts and regularly hear adults reading aloud with enthusiasm and expression.

We want children to leave the Early Years not only knowing how to read, but believing that reading is something exciting, enjoyable and worth doing.

Mathematics Through Meaningful Experiences

Early mathematics is developed through practical experiences, exploration and purposeful teaching.

Children encounter number, pattern, shape, space and measure throughout their everyday provision. They count objects, compare quantities, create patterns, investigate shapes, solve practical problems and begin to explain their mathematical thinking.

Adults help children notice the mathematics within their play and provide opportunities for important concepts to be explored repeatedly in different contexts. This builds a secure understanding rather than relying simply on memorising procedures.

Developing the Whole Child

The Early Years are about much more than preparing children academically for Year 1.

We place great importance on children learning how to form positive relationships, communicate their needs, manage emotions, take appropriate risks, persevere when something is difficult and become increasingly independent.

Children are encouraged to make choices, solve problems and take responsibility for themselves and their environment. Through these experiences, they gradually develop the confidence and resilience required to become successful learners.

Working in Partnership with Families

Parents and carers know their children better than anyone, and we recognise the importance of working together throughout a child’s Early Years journey.

We share children’s achievements and development with families and provide guidance on how learning can be supported at home. This is particularly important when children begin learning phonics and reading through Little Wandle, where consistency between home and school can make an enormous difference.

Most importantly, we want children’s first experience of education at Ainslie Wood to establish something that lasts well beyond Reception: curiosity about the world, confidence in themselves and excitement about what they might learn next.