The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum is for children aged from 3-5 years and is arranged as follows:
PRE-KG is for children aged 3-4 years of age.
KG1 is for children aged 4-5 years of age.
KG2 is for children aged 5-6 years of age.
The four key themes that underpin the development of every child include:
· A Unique Child – Every child is a competent learner and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
· Positive Relationships - children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents, carers and teachers.
· Enabling Environments – The environment plays a key role in supporting and extending a child’s development and learning.
· Learning and Development – Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates and all areas of learning and development are equally important.
Throughout the Foundation Stage, children progress through a programme of skills and knowledge development culminating in the Early Learning Goals, (ELGs). This programme is a British Early Years curriculum that emphasizes learning through play and exploration, active learning and activities to develop curiosity and critical thinking.
In our Pre-KG and KG classes, our goal is to help support parents while providing a safe and nurturing learning environment for their children. We aim to provide the foundational skills that children will need to continue their education when they are ready to move on and our teachers are committed to providing age-appropriate programmes that stimulate the cognitive, physical, social, emotional and creative development of each child.
Crown Private School follows the British EYFS or Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum for our Pre-KG and KG1 classes which are based on seven areas of learning and development that shape the educational programme.
The seven areas of learning are:
· Communication and language children's learning and competence in communicating, speaking and listening are constantly supported and extended.
· Physical development
The physical development of students is encouraged through the provision of opportunities for them to be active and interactive and to improve their skills of coordination, control, manipulation and movement.
We provide children with experiences and support which will help them develop a positive sense of themselves and others as well as respect for others and good social skills.
Children’s learning and competence in beginning to read and write are constantly supported and extended.
Children are provided with opportunities to make sense of the world around them through exploring plants and objects in their natural environment, using a range of tools safely, undertaking practical experiments and investigating different materials as well as encountering creatures and people in different contexts.
Children are encouraged to express themselves through a range of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role-play activities.
All areas of learning are important and interconnected and there are three prime areas of learning that are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to form relationships and thrive. These three prime areas are communication and language, physical development and personal, social and emotional development. In addition, children are supported to develop in the four specific areas of literacy, mathematics, understanding of the world together with expressive arts and design.
Children in our Pre-KG and KG 1 class learn mostly through games and play and assessment of learning is gathered through daily classroom observations based on the early learning goals which can be found in the EYFS framework.
Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) programme is topic-based and designed to promote language development, literacy and pre-reading skills through the Song of Sounds phonics programme and a range of literacy activities. Song of Sounds is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme that runs from EYFS to Year 2. The programme teaches children to read and write by introducing them to the sounds that they can hear in words (phonemes) and their written equivalent (graphemes).
Math concepts such as sorting, counting and problem-solving are introduced through active learning games and activities that enable students to learn through investigation. Children learn to count and understand the value of numbers including concepts such as higher and lower. Children also learn essential skills of Shape, Space and Measure which support their understanding of the size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money. They are taught how to compare quantities, objects and solve problems through active learning and investigation.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) children will start to gain the Science knowledge that they will build on through their primary schools years such as developing their skills of observation, prediction, critical thinking and discussion.
Every day our kindergarten classes have designated times for small learning groups. During these times children can receive more focused attention from the teacher to support their individual development and help children complete tasks and activities. Student progress is tracked using a continuous Learning Journey for our Pre-KG and KG1 students and when each child has achieved the early learning goals they commence the British curriculum for Year 1 (CPS KG2).
