EYFS
The Early Years team at Monkshouse Primary Academy are very passionate about inspiring children to be the very best they can be. Children feel safe and respected whilst at Monkshouse. Parents tell us that they feel supported by staff who are approachable and caring.
At Monkshouse School, we recognise that your child’s education is very special, and choosing the right school is an important decision.
By working together, we maintain a safe, happy, and stimulating environment where everyone is valued and respected, and where difference and diversity are celebrated. Through a creative and exciting curriculum, we aim to meet each child’s emotional, intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual needs — setting realistic yet aspirational goals to help them truly flourish.
Our Reception Classes
Our Reception two classrooms are bright, inviting spaces that flow into a shared area designed to spark imagination and conversation. Role play, storytelling, puppets, and cosy corners create a language-rich environment where children love to learn and express themselves.
Learning here is playful, creative, and child-led. Our teachers carefully enhance each child’s curiosity through thoughtful interactions and engaging termly topics. Children can independently explore small world play, natural enquiry, construction, maths, and creative stations filled with paints, malleable materials, and plenty of tools for cutting, joining, and making! Reading and writing opportunities are woven throughout, both indoors and outdoors, so children develop literacy skills naturally as they play.
Outside, our spacious, Reception-only area offers endless opportunities for exploration and physical development. Each week, our Forest Adventures sessions take learning into the woodland, where children discover the natural world, build dens, work together, and develop confidence and teamwork skills in the great outdoors.
Our EYFS Curriculum
Termly Topics
Termly topics enrich the children’s learning, broadening knowledge and understanding of the world around us. Topics are planned around a range of learning objectives and are designed to be inspirational and exciting. Child-led learning naturally leads from the direct teaching, planned activities and enhanced resources that staff provide.
Learning and Development
Reception children are required to follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) which was revised in 2021. There are seven areas of learning that must shape educational provision in early years settings, these are categorised into Prime areas and Specific areas. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Staff focus on these and the Characteristics of Effective Learning to ensure all children make progress.
Personal, Social & Emotional Development
This area of development involves increasing children’s levels of independence, developing a positive sense of themselves and others; forming positive relationships and developing respect for others; developing social skills and learning how to manage their feelings and understanding appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their abilities. Children will learn to listen to each other and the adults involved in their daily activities and have an awareness of their own needs.
Communication and Language
Development involves giving children opportunities to experience a language rich environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations. Children will learn to listen to stories, songs rhymes and poems, follow instructions involving several ideas or actions, answer questions about their experiences or in response to stories or events, speak with confidence and control and use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences, speaking in complex sentences with a wide range of vocabulary.
Physical Development
Involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; to develop their co-ordination, control and movement. Children will also be helped to understand the importance of a healthy lifestyle including oral health. Children will learn to travel around, under, over and through balancing equipment, throw, catch, roll, kick and aim using balls, beanbags and hoops. Children will develop their fine motor skills, essential for writing, through a range of fun activities.
Literacy
Involves teaching children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children will be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest. Children will learn to become aware of rhyming and alliteration, they will learn about the sounds in words, to read and write simple regular words and sentences and how to hold a pencil and use it effectively to form recognisable letters, and by the end of Reception write simple sentences.
Mathematics
Involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting understanding and using numbers calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces and measures.
Understanding the World
Involves guiding children to make sense of the physical and natural world through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Expressive Arts and Design
Involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play and design and technology.