Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Welcome to Reception Class

At Barn Croft Primary, our Early Years provision is grounded in the belief that every child deserves the best possible start to their education. We create a rich, inclusive environment that fosters curiosity, independence, and a lifelong love of learning—indoors and out.

Our Vision and Aims

At the heart of our EYFS vision is the aim to nurture:

Independent, resilient learners through child-led experiences
Curious and confident explorers, unafraid to try new things
Happy and healthy individuals, thriving through physical and social interaction
Effective communicators, supported through meaningful interactions and storytelling
Creative thinkers, who learn through play, problem-solving and experimentation

We believe that outdoor play is not a luxury, but a fundamental right for every child. The outdoors offers a unique opportunity for children to experience freedom, take appropriate risks, and learn through discovery.

Our "Five a Day" for Outdoor Learning ensures that every child receives a balanced experience that supports the development of the whole child:

Exploratory Play: We provide diverse and stimulating spaces that encourage children to explore, move into the unknown, and ignite their imagination.
Physical Play: Our outdoor areas offer opportunities for climbing, running, balancing, and testing limits in safe and developmentally appropriate ways.
Social Play: Children learn to express themselves, negotiate, take turns and resolve conflict through play with peers.
Loose Parts Play: With materials like pots, pans, mud kitchens and natural resources, children can build, invent, and create, building fine motor skills and problem-solving abilities.
Quiet Spaces: Calm, cosy corners support rest, reflection, and mindfulness—vital for emotional well-being.

Early Years Curriculum

Creating a Love of Lifelong Learning

Our Early Years curriculum is designed to be creative, to develop excellent language, reading, writing, and maths skills as well as understanding of the world. At Barn Croft we follow themes in our EYFS curriculum so that children can make links between experiences in their own lives and the learning opportunities in our setting. We use high quality texts and picture books to lead the learning themes and our valued daily story time.

We use NCETM to support Maths in Reception and Read Write Inc to support the teaching of reading. More on these can be found here.

Organising the Space

Our learning environments are thoughtfully designed to promote autonomy, creativity and collaboration:

Zoned Areas indoors and out provide children with a range of experiences—from role play and construction to water exploration and storytelling.
Nursery and Reception work as a collaborative unit, sharing resources and fostering a strong sense of community.
Children independently select resources as much as possible, with clearly labelled containers that support choice and responsibility.
Our outdoor space is seen as an equal partner to the indoors—not an extension, but a complementary learning environment, rich with stimuli and contact with nature.

Children move freely between areas, making meaningful choices about how and where they learn.

The Role of Adults

Our team of practitioners play a critical role in shaping high-quality play and learning:

Quality interactions are central: we listen carefully, ask purposeful questions, model language, and extend children’s thinking.
We support, rather than direct, play, helping children to find their own solutions and take ownership of their learning.
Adults manage the learning environment to ensure it is safe, stimulating, inclusive and responsive to the children’s interests and needs.
We always ask: “Why this? Why now?” to ensure our interactions and provision are intentional, timely, and impactful.

Planning for Play: Indoors and Outdoors

Indoor provision is carefully planned to offer a balance of child-initiated and adult-guided experiences across all seven areas of learning. Key principles include:

A well-organised environment that promotes independence, creativity and purposeful play
Carefully selected open-ended resources that encourage children to explore, investigate and represent their thinking
Opportunities for sustained shared thinking through quality adult-child interactions
Enhanced provision areas that link to current themes, seasonal topics, or children’s fascinations
A consistent focus on communication and language, literacy, and mathematics, embedded through play and daily routines

We ensure that indoor play is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive—supporting both structured learning and free exploration, tailored to each child’s stage of development.

Outdoor learning at Barn Croft is planned with purpose and passion. We follow a seasonal curriculum map that ensures experiences are rooted in the natural world and linked to children’s interests and developmental needs.

Continuous and enhanced provision enables children to revisit and deepen learning through open-ended resources.
Focus activities offer opportunities for adult-guided exploration alongside independent play.
We embrace the unexpected—a change in weather, the discovery of a bug, a child’s question—and use it to drive learning forward.
Our curriculum is inclusive, ensuring all children can access and benefit from the outdoors, regardless of need.

The outdoor environment is not a replica of the classroom—it is a unique space that offers different opportunities and must be planned accordingly. Together, our indoor and outdoor planning creates a cohesive, immersive curriculum that supports every child to thrive—physically, socially, emotionally and cognitively.

Operational Bits

To ensure the success and sustainability of our learning approach, we follow clear daily routines:

Timetables are designed to provide long, uninterrupted periods of play, allowing deep engagement.
Risk is managed, not removed—we support children in learning how to assess and navigate challenges safely.
Children wear suitable clothing for all weathers and learn to take responsibility for getting ready.
Daily maintenance checks ensure resources are safe and the space remains inviting and purposeful.
Lunchtimes and transitions are managed smoothly to maintain a calm, consistent experience for all children. Familiar adults support the children during lunch times.

Tapestry

Every child’s learning journey is documented via the online tool ‘Tapestry’ which allows parents and carers to view and comment on their child’s progress.

What to Expect in the Early Years

The DfES have funded a very useful guide for parents to explain the development stages that children may experience in their Early Years. Foundation Years

To view the Early Years new framework (statutory framework for curriculum) please follow the link.

Please click here to view our termly Curriculum Letters.