Foundation Stage support

What is the Early Years Foundation Stage?

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers the time in your child's life between birth and age five and aims to ensure that he or she has the best possible start, both socially and academically. Development in these years prepares children for school and for future learning. Good parenting and high-quality learning at EYFS help children to make the most of their abilities.

The 'framework' for the EYFS is similar to the primary school curriculum but is designed for very young children and is flexible enough to follow your child's unique needs and interests.

It was revised in 2012, placing a greater emphasis on the role of parents in children's progress, and identifying seven key areas of learning and development.

Main aims

The main aims of the EYFS curriculum cover seven key areas, as described below.

Prime areas

Although the seven areas are interconnected, the following prime areas cover the knowledge and skills that form the foundation for your child's 'school readiness'. These areas are crucial for igniting children's enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.

1. 1. Communication and language - helping children to listen attentively and express themselves confidently and clearly
2. 2. Physical development - improving coordination, control and movement, and understanding the importance of physical activity and healthy eating
3. 3. Personal, social and emotional development - encouraging children to form a positive sense of themselves and others, develop social skills and learn how to manage feelings.

Specific areas

Children must also be supported in the following specific areas, through which the prime areas are strengthened and applied. The areas of literacy and mathematics in particular form a baseline for the National Curriculum providing the foundations for future learning.

1. 4. Literacy - encouraging children to link sounds and letters, and to begin to read and write
2. 5. Mathematics - helping children to count, understand and use numbers, and describe shapes, spaces and measures
3. 6. Understanding the world - guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community
4. 7. Expressive arts and design - enabling children to explore a wide range of media and materials, encouraging them to share their thoughts through creative activities.

Early Learning Goals

Each key area is broken into Early Learning Goals, which form the basis of your child's EYFS Profile at the end of this stage.

The EYFS Profile provides a well-rounded picture of children's knowledge, understanding and abilities, their progress against expected levels and their readiness for Year 1. The content of a child's EYFS Profile will be taken into account at Key Stage 1.

This will be the second such assessment of your child's progress. When your child is aged between two and three, practitioners provide you with a short written summary of your child's development in the prime areas.

This Progress check identifies your child's strengths and any areas where the child's progress is less than expected. Where additional support is needed, the report describes strategies that the provider intends to adopt to address concerns.

Supporting your child at the Early Years Foundation Stage

Between birth and age five, children learn more than at any other period in their lives. Early learning is vital and, as your child's first teacher, you can make the greatest difference at this stage.

Children learn through practical activities and through exploring their environment. By providing varied and stimulating experiences you can support your child's learning and prepare him or her for school.

Communication and language

Even when children are too young to speak, talking to them encourages them to listen and to learn new words. Talk to your child about everyday routines, such as bathtime and mealtimes, and point out the uses of different objects.

New experiences, such as a visit to the zoo or swimming pool, stimulate curiosity and increase children's powers of observation, vocabulary and memory. Ask your child about new experiences and encourage him or her to develop explanations by connecting ideas and events. Listen carefully for grammatical mistakes - especially in the use of tenses. Use correct vocabulary, repeating new words often. Children enjoy new sounds and pick up words quickly.

Getting your child to follow instructions develops both listening skills and memory - a good foundation for remembering sounds, words and spellings later. Start with a simple instruction and gradually increase its complexity. Memory games, such as Chinese Whispers, further develop children's imagination and memory, and nurture early story-telling skills.

Physical development

Physical activity develops children's balance, coordination, control and movement. Walking, running and climbing help to develop children's gross motor skills (movements made with the limbs, torso or entire body).

Outdoor play - involving, for example, ball games, obstacle courses and climbing frames - is especially good for developing overall coordination. Indoor play prepares children for learning to write as it helps to develop fine motor skills (coordination of hand and eye movements). Construction play, using toys such as Duplo®, Lego® and Meccano® or just cardboard boxes, encourages children to handle equipment effectively.

Talk to your child about healthy eating, exercise and other ways of keeping healthy and safe. Before starting school, your child should be able to manage his or her own basic hygiene and personal needs, including dressing and going to the toilet.

Personal, social and emotional development

Playing independently and with others offers useful opportunities for personal, social and emotional development, enabling children to:

• become more independent
• develop the confidence to face new challenges
• increase their attention and concentration span
• learn to manage feelings
• develop socially acceptable behaviour
• establish friendships

Playgroups help children to develop self-awareness and self-confidence and to communicate with others. Simple matching games, such as Lotto, help children learn to follow rules and play cooperatively. Discussing emotions - using emotions cubes or puppets, for example - helps children learn to manage feelings.

Literacy

By helping to develop your child's literacy skills, you will provide him or her with a strong foundation for future progress.

Encouraging children to link sounds and letters helps them to read and spell words. This method, known as 'phonics', helps them to understand that words are made up of phonemes (sounds) and to learn the different sounds in a word. Play clapping games, mimic sounds and make and play percussion instruments to help develop your child's listening skills and early phonic knowledge. As the child progresses to recognising graphemes (letters representing phonemes), use solid plastic or magnetic letters for segmenting and blending activities. Surround your child with storybooks, picture books, pop-up books, poems, nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Encourage your child to read text on adverts, food packets, road signs and shop fronts - and so to understand the functions of writing: this is an important step in learning to write.

Clear handwriting requires good manual control. Modelling, colouring and craft activities build dexterity. As your child's handwriting develops, encourage him or her to work with varying sizes, colours and textures of paper and a range of chunky pencils, crayons, pens and felt tips.

Mathematics

An awareness of number in everyday life provides a good foundation for numeracy. Draw your child's attention to house numbers, page numbers and clock numbers. Encourage your child to count - buttons, steps, people in a queue, ducks on a pond. Counting games and rhymes provide valuable repetition. Stories featuring numbers, such as 'The Three Little Pigs' and 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', show numbers in familiar contexts.

Help your child to become aware of size, colour, weight, position, distance and time by talking about these daily. For example:

• Why not wear your red T-shirt today?
• The pencil is longer than the crayon.
• Let's cut the pastry into circles.

Sorting, matching and classifying activities encourage children to talk about shape, space and measure and to develop problem-solving skills. Ask your child to sort household objects by different criteria (such as colour, size, shape, weight) or play matching games (such as Snap, Happy Families or Pairs).

Measuring quantities and comparing objects helps children to develop mathematical vocabulary. Words such as 'yesterday', 'tomorrow' and 'this afternoon' help your child to understand time. Discuss how long an activity or journey might take and specify times of day, days of the week and months of the year.

Understanding the world

Children are naturally curious, and opportunities to explore people, places, technology and the environment help them make sense of their world.

Encourage your child to respect different cultures and beliefs. Reading stimulates discussion on communities and traditions: explain similarities and differences in people's appearance or dress and the significance of cultural and religious events. Use role-play to explore what it means to belong to different communities. Encourage your child to re-enact family and community events using toys such as town blocks, Playmobil® and doll's houses and to imitate body language, expressions or accents.

A simple journey, such as going to the park or the shops, helps your child to learn about different environments. Point out different buildings and their uses, or plants, birds, trees and flowers. Discuss the weather and seasons.

Children learn best by doing, and simple investigations help your child to understand the physical world. Fill a bowl with water and let your child experiment with floating and sinking objects, or explore hot and cold by experimenting with ice cubes.

Your child needs to understand the importance of technology in different environments. Discuss the purposes of common tools, such as a trowel when gardening or scales when baking. Provide props that encourage your child to role-play the uses of technology in different settings: for example, when scanning a bar code at the supermarket, typing letters on a keyboard or telephoning the doctor.

Expressive arts and design

Creative activities are often favourites: provide your child with materials for experimenting with colour, design, texture, shape and function.

When painting, start with one colour, gradually adding more, and encourage your child to experiment. Cut vegetables, corks, buttons and sponges can all be used for printing, as can fingers and feet. For collage, use anything available, from leaves and shells to bottle tops and pasta. Always use non-toxic glue and safety scissors.

Provide your child with 3-D craft activities that teach him or her about shape and space, as well as building imagination and confidence. Plasticine®, salt dough, wood, cardboard tubes, egg cartons and other recycled objects can be made into models or puppets.

Children need opportunities to develop their imagination. Role-play and make-believe encourage children to share thoughts and feelings. Popular scenarios include shopping, hospitals and playing house. Guide your child towards the necessary equipment - a dressing-up box is useful.

Singing and playing different songs and types of music is a less labour-intensive way of developing your child's imagination. Encouraging your child to dance opens up new ways of expressing feelings.