The Early Years Approach

Find out all you need to know about the Early Years approach and how we work together as a team in the booklet below. 

Research has shown the importance of play in developing children’s cognitive, emotional, social and physical development. As part of our early years approach, we highly value learning through play and believe that it is how our children learn best.

The Early Years Foundation Stage guidelines state that children learn best when they are playing and exploring, active and independent. With this in mind, we create practical and fun activities to engage the children and extend their learning.

One of the benefits of play is that it is a great tool to develop children's communication skills. You can support this at home by modelling language as you play with and alongside your child. You can try strategies such as pausing at the end of a sentence to encourage your child to fill in the word, e.g. “ready, steady….” “You are playing with the…”.

If your child is learning to communicate using photos or symbols, you may like to put their favourite toys and activities away or up high and provide a photo or symbol at their levels for them to give to you to communicate what they would like to play with. You could also do this at meal times so that your child can request what they would like to eat and drink. If you need any support with making symbols and photos, please let me know and I will happily create some for you to use at home.