Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage learn in Antarctica class. 

In the Early Years at Great Waldingfield CEVC Primary School we pride ourselves on listening to children and those who care for them and using this information to personalise child’s learning.

Learning should be fun and we strongly believe in first hand learning, valuing the importance of the indoor and outdoor environment to develop children’s curiosity, creativity, thinking and problem solving skills. Our aim is to develop life-long learners.

We believe that the best outcomes for children occur when most of the activity within a child’s day is a mixture of: 

• Child-initiated play, actively supported by adults 

• Focused learning, with adults guiding the learning through playful, rich experiential activities

We plan and organise activities in the daily routine to reflect the different types of learning to best support children’s well-being and continual progression. By combining child-initiated learning and adult-led opportunities our staff select the approach that best fits the developmental stage of the children, and for individuals and groups.

Alongside the children’s interest as a stimulus, we also use a topic based approach which ensures that the planning for Reception covers the learning goals of the curriculum.

Our day in school will always include a phonics session where we play games and do activities to help us learn about the sounds that make up words. We will sing songs and practise reading and writing.  We also LOVE stories. Children in Antarctica class love to make up their own stories and act them out as a group in front of the class. We like making our own costumes to wear for our performances too!

We will also do a maths session every day. This might be in a little group, with a friend or as a whole group. We use numbers and shapes in so many games and activities!

We often get VERY messy in Antarctica class. We love to dig in our garden, play in the mud kitchen and have fun creating beautiful masterpieces with paint and sticky glue!   It’s a good job our hands and our clothes can be washed!

We have lots of opportunities to learn as we play. We love using the reading and writing skills we learn at school and home during our play! 

We also use all our maths skills as we set up shops in our role play!