Early Years
Welcome to Early Years!
Miss Turner and Mrs Grindle are our Early Years teachers. Mrs Tilby, Mrs Ling, Miss Censi and Mrs Smith are our Early Years Practitioners.
We work in different groups throughout the day.
What is the early years?
In early years we learn about the world in which we live and our relationships with each other. We have fun learning through play, exploring and learning new skills.
The Early Years curriculum is organised into seven areas of learning:
- Personal, social and emotional;
- Communication and language;
- Physical;
- Literacy;
- Mathematics;
- Expressive Arts;
- Knowledge of the World;
We link our learning so in one session we may be writing, counting, painting, playing, negotiating, roleplaying, constructing and climbing. For example in a session about Jack and the Beanstalk we might measure beanstalks using our feet, role playing as customers in our pretend garden centre, counting beans into packets using tweezers, designing and making our own seed packets, retelling the story using puppets in our puppet theatre, climbing pretend beanstalks on the outside climbing frame and printing beanstalks using repeating patterns. Learning in the early years is great fun and we are always very busy.
In the early years we write for many different purposes. We write letters and post them, write postcards, write notes to our friends, make posters, write signs and much more. We love to learn in our writing area.
We also develop our physical skills through play and love to explore large and small equipment such as climbing frames, balancing beams, balls, hoops, stilts, bicycles, scooters, push and pull toys, beanbags and bats inside and outside in our outdoor area.
We love to be creative and are really good at selecting our own tools and equipment to use in our learning.
We sometimes work in a group on large pieces of artwork such as our splatter firework pictures, we learn with our friends and sometimes we like to learn by ourselves.
In early years we are great mathematicians and we are becoming super spellers and readers.
We also love improving our ICT skills on the classroom computers and also in the ICT suite.
How Can I help My Child At Home?
HELPING AT HOME
As a parent you are your child's primary educator. At New Waltham Academy we like to foster close link with parents and involve you in your child's education as much as possible. There are many things you can do to help your child at home. Click on the link below to give you some ideas. You can also use these helpful hints when adding to your child's 'Home Learning Journey'
Tapestry
Learning Journals and special books are a way to record the special moments of children, and to keep parents involved in a partnership as their children blossom and grow. More recently they have been used in conjunction with the EYFS developmental stages to assess more formally how children are progressing.
These individual records build up into a treasured memoir that children can take with them when they leave for the next stages of their journey through life - each entry forming a thread in the warp and weft of the tapestry that is their life.
Tapestry allows staff and parents to add notes and images and have them immediately available as part of the complete story of the child's life at school. Tapestry allows parents to view and comment on these special moments, and to be able to contribute their own stories of the child's life outside school.
Parents can access and add to their child learning journey using the link below. If you have forgotten your log in details please see a member of the Early Years team.