The Early Years Foundation Stage at Amblecote

At Amblecote, we provide high-quality early education and are dedicated to giving every child the strongest possible start to their learning journey.

Our approach is carefully balanced. We blend engaging adult led activities, rich core experiences—such as gardening and specialist taught music—and focused phonics sessions with the very best early years practice. Children learn through play, explore enabling environments, enjoy meaningful outdoor learning, follow their own interests, and develop through purposeful interactions with adults.

As children move through the year groups, this balance evolves. Our provision is always developmentally appropriate, ensuring that children are taught the skills they need at each stage. Expectations grow progressively, building on prior learning so that every child makes sustained and confident progress.

Our curriculum is based on the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework educational programmes and ‘Development Matters’ guidance, along with children’s interests and developmental needs, and the context of our school. Our curriculum is designed to give children the foundational knowledge and understanding needed to prepare them for year 1 and beyond. This is taught mainly through our focus texts and continuous provision.

Developing children’s language and vocabulary is central to our early years provision. It underpins every aspect of learning. Through high-quality interactions, rich story experiences, and environments designed to spark conversation, children are surrounded by opportunities to talk, listen, and share ideas.

Across Preschool and Reception, children enjoy a wide variety of stories, songs, and rhymes. These repeated, meaningful experiences help them build confidence, deepen their understanding, and develop a genuine love of language. Our daily routines, focused activities, and well-planned interventions all support language development, and our staff receive ongoing training to ensure the highest quality practice.

Reading plays a key role in our curriculum. Children take part in daily story time and regularly share books with adults. In Preschool and Reception, we use a carefully chosen collection of core books so children become familiar with well-loved stories and the rich vocabulary within them.

Strong reading and writing begin with talk. Children learn new words, join in with repeated phrases, and discuss the stories they hear. This builds comprehension and lays the foundations for early writing.

Writing develops naturally through play and storytelling. Children have many opportunities to mark make, create their own narratives, and write for real purposes. As they begin phonics, they start to use their growing knowledge of sounds in their writing, supported by adults who model language and guide them step by step.

Our aim is to nurture confident communicators, enthusiastic readers, and emerging writers who enjoy expressing themselves.

In Pre‑school, children take part in Little Wandle Foundations activities. These focus on Phase 1 skills such as listening, sound discrimination, and enjoying songs and rhymes. These playful experiences help children tune into sounds and build the essential foundations for early reading.

As the year progresses, children begin simple Little Wandle routines, and letter sounds are introduced in the summer term when they are developmentally ready.

Formal Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised teaching begin sin Reception. Daily, systematic sessions are taught so learning is closely matched to each child’s stage. Children who need extra support receive additional, targeted practice to help them keep up.

Our approach ensures every child develops strong early reading skills with confidence and enjoyment.

In the early years, maths is taught through practical, meaningful experiences that help children build strong conceptual understanding. Children explore number, shape, pattern, and measure using hands-on resources and real life contexts, supporting them to make sense of mathematical ideas.

In Reception, we follow White Rose alongside the NCETM Mastering Number programme to develop deep early number sense. We have enhanced our maths provision with the addition of a new, well-resourced Maths Shed in the outdoor environment, giving children even more opportunities to explore number and problem-solving through play.

Our aim is to ensure every child develops confidence, curiosity, and a secure foundation in early maths.

At the heart of our early years provision is the belief that learning through play is the most meaningful and effective way for young children to learn. Children enjoy a wide range of open ended, exploratory experiences, and our daily routines include periods of uninterrupted play, allowing them to become deeply absorbed in their learning.

Our enabling environments, both indoors and outdoors, are carefully designed to promote exploration, independence, and discovery. Classrooms and outdoor areas across all year groups offer opportunities across all areas of learning. Children can access resources independently, make choices, follow their interests, and extend their learning in ways that feel natural and purposeful. This leads to high levels of involvement and deeper learning.

We place a strong emphasis on the importance of outdoor learning throughout our provision. This has many benefits, including contributing to health and wellbeing, and in developing the ‘whole child’. Children are often more confident outside, and outdoor play offers great opportunities for experiencing the natural world, and active learning and exploration, as well as elements of risk and challenge.

Much of our teaching is through interactions. Adults observe the children closely and join in (‘intervene’) sensitively with their play, to extend their language and thinking, and develop their knowledge and skills. We support the ‘Characteristics of effective learning’ (‘playing and exploring’, ‘active learning’ and ‘creating and thinking critically’) developing confident, resilient, independent learners throughout the early years. We encourage good attitudes to learning, like curiosity, concentration and willingness to ‘have a go’, in everything we do.