Welcome to Oxhey Wood's reception classes:

Our teachers are: Miss Stanton and Miss Mcdonald

Our teaching assistants are: Miss Farrell, Mrs Akbari and Mrs Barbulescu

Oxhey Wood Early Years Values and Principles: 

We hope that this page will help you to really get to know our school and will give you an insight into some of the learning experience your child will encounter with us.

We place great importance on a close working partnership with parents/carers and greatly value the contributions and support that you can offer your child in their journey through reception.

We aim to provide a safe, secure, challenging and stimulating learning environment where learning can be fun, to encourage our children to have high self-esteem and a believe that they can achieve.

What is the Early Years Foundation Stage?

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is how the Government and Early Years professionals describe the time in your child’s life between birth and 5. This is a very important stage as it helps your child get into the routine of school life and is the foundation of their future learning and successes.  From the moment your child starts in our Nursery they will experience a full, active, exciting and secure world that supports their development, care and learning needs. At Oxhey Wood Primary School, there is one Nursery and two Reception classes and the teachers follow a legal document called the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum framework. 

What is the EYFS Framework - why do we have one?
There are seven areas of learning and development that shape educational provision in Early Years settings. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Our children’s learning experiences enable them to develop competency and skills not just academically but also socially, emotionally, behaviourally and physically. 

The three prime areas of learning are crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and for building their capacity to learn and form relationships.  They are:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
   

Our staff will also support children in four other areas, through which the prime areas are strengthened:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design
   

All areas of learning are connected together. The characteristics of effective teaching and learning weave through them all. That is because children in the Early Years are becoming more powerful learners and thinkers. These characteristics develop as they learn to do new things, acquire new skills, develop socially and emotionally and become better communicators.

Characteristics of Effective Learning 

This is a key element of the Early Years Foundation Stage development. It covers the ways in which children should learn from their environment, their experiences and their activities and how this is to be reflected in teaching lessons.

The 3 characteristics are:

• Playing and exploring - eg showing curiosity about objects, events and people
• Active learning - eg showing a ‘can do’ attitude
• Creating and thinking critically - eg observing and solving a problem

We start each day with our busy finger activities which develop our fine motor skills- necessary for us to begin writing, cutting, painting. 

After busy fingers we have our class phonics lesson where we learn a new sound and action to match. Please practise these sounds at home together. 

An important part of our day is 'Learning through play' sometimes referred to as LTP. Your child’s learning will be based on the Early Years Foundation Stage seven areas of learning.

Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both inside and outside. The wide range of activities and experiences we offer are intended to enrich the overall development of each individual child.

British Values in our EYFS

Our curriculum

How to help at home:

One of the biggest areas of development for your child at this stage is communication. Your child will experiment with communicating in a variety of ways at school – for example, through stories, in conversations with adults and their friends, and through facial expression, movement and dance.

> Talk to them lots. Try to make the conversations as two-way as possible – children learn much more if they are in a dialogue, not just being spoken to.

>Read to your child and encourage them to read to you. Read anything and everything, not just the reading scheme books. Try to encourage your child to talk about the pictures, or to make predictions about what will happen next. Above all, it’s important for your child to enjoy reading, so try to relax, and stop when either of you begins to feel pressured or anxious.

>You can help your child build up hand strength and fine motor skills by playing with playdough. threading, paints and colouring in. This will really help when they come to learn to write.

>Support your child with writing their name, forming each letter correctly.

>Numbers are all around us, from calendars to door numbers, street signs to car registration plates. Pointing them out and talking about them with your child can show that they have a real life context.

>Have a go at forming numbers in sand with a stick, on the pavement with chalk or on sheets of paper with finger paints. Make numbers out of modelling clay, or try holding your child's finger and forming the number in the air.

>Try to involve your child in using numbers at home by singing number rhymes and songs or by encouraging them to recognise and read numbers.