Welcome to Early Years Foundation Stage at Handale

“Early childhood is an explosion of experience”

Jenny Lindon

At Handale, our EYFS is made up of Pre-Nursery, Nursery and Reception classes. We provide a nurturing, stimulating and inclusive environment where every child feels valued and inspired to learn. We believe that a child’s early years education is a crucial time for exploration, discovery and building the foundations for their future onward journey.

Meet our team

Our Pre-Nursery staff are: Mrs Darby and Miss Reid

Our Nursery staff are: Mrs Kentfield-Howe and Miss Alderson

Our Reception staff are: Mrs Moore and Mrs Dean

Miss Preston and Miss Barnes also help support the children across our provision.

EYFS Curriculum

Our curriculum is broad and balanced, encompassing key life skills, experiences and expectations. In response to the 2017 ‘Bold Beginnings’ report and the revised 2021 Development Matters and EYFS Framework 2025, we have taken the opportunity to revisit, reflect upon and share our expectations for a quality reception year, encompassing our Trust values, and collective experience – along with a realignment of the core principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage:

These principles are:

  • every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
  • children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships
  • children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers
  • children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates  

Whilst some aspects of our ‘Trust Ready’ curriculum are academically challenging, we fully embed and ‘live’ the three characteristics of effective teaching and learning of:

  • playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
  • active learning – children concentrate, keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
  • creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.  

Our curriculum enables the children to develop skills in all 7 areas;

Our curriculum focuses on the 7 areas of learning of the Early Years Foundation Stage : 

  • communication and language
  • physical development
  • personal, social and emotional development
  • literacy
  • mathematics
  • understanding the world
  • expressive arts and design
Curriculum Overview Nursery (Pending)
Curriculum Overview Reception (Pending)
EYFS Curriculum

  

  • https://www.handaleprimary.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Early-Years-at-Handale-Primary-School.-June-21docx.docx