EYFS Themes
Academy
EYFS Themes
Unique Child
- All about me
- I’m a superhero
- Family links
- My learning journal
- My ideas, creations, and interests
Every Child will feel important, valued, and respected, they learn to trust and gain the confidence of parents/carers and their key workers
They become Creative learners!
Positive Relationships
- Key person
- Belonging
- Community
- Nursery friends
Children gain a sense of self-worth and feel part of a wider community.
They can make mistakes and bounce forward.
They become resilient learners!
Enabling Environment
A well planned and resourced environment that Promotes:
- Independent learning
- Resilience
- Creativity
- Exploration
- Critical thinking
Creative and resilient children thrive in an enabling environment.
They develop a love for learning!
Learning & Development
Children learn and develop in different ways. This includes the care and education of children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Creativity is a skill that all children can develop. We need to foster creativity in young children because it is a key component of health and happiness. Creativity is not limited to artistic and musical expression—it is also essential for science, math, and even social and emotional intelligence.
We allow children the time for creative expression. Children need a lot of time for unstructured, child-directed, imaginative play –unencumbered by adult direction.
We Provide specific spaces where children can be creative while making a mess.
We foster a creative atmosphere, where children are encouraged to seek, question, and express their own ideas.
We encourage children to make mistakes, and we support them when they fail, children who are afraid of making mistakes, and who worry about being judged will curb their own creative thought.
We Celebrate and share children’s ideas and creativity by displaying and sharing their work with you. We also share our passion for learning by exploring together, the world around us, we help children to embrace new technologies, so that they grow up to find change exciting and not over-whelming or intimidating.
We give children the opportunity to find new ways of doing things, by letting children disagree, we encourage them to find more than one route to a solution, and more than one solution to a problem.
We do not always reward children for exhibiting creativity: We believe that all children are intrinsically creative learners and that always providing rewards and incentives can imped the natural creative process.
We celebrate the process rather that the product. We do this by asking questions about the process for example we may say, ‘I saw how hard you have been concentrating’ or ‘Did you enjoy making that?
Creative people are more flexible and better problem solvers, which makes them more able to adapt to technological advances and deal with change—as well as take advantage of new opportunities
Resilience is a skill that helps a child to bounce forward from stress, adversity, failure, challenges, or even trauma. However, resilience is a skill children develop as they grow.
We Build up a Strong Emotional Connection with your child by giving them individual, one to one attention, your child will feel encouraged to ask for help and try and work through difficult situations.
We Promote Healthy Risk-Taking, by encouraging children to leave their comfort zone, for example, trying a new sport, participating in the school play, or striking up a conversation with a shy peer, all help children to take risks and grow up confident learners,
We Resist the Urge to Fix It and Ask Questions Instead, we believe that we can help children find their own solutions to problems by bouncing the problem back to them with questions, rather than explanations and lectures.
We Teach children Problem-Solving Skills, by an age-appropriate approach, we work with children to solve difficult issues, by brainstorming ideas and weighing up the pros and cons, children become better able to cope with situations outside their comfort zone.
We help children Label Emotions; This helps children to make sense of what they are experiencing. We tell them it is okay to feel anxious, sad, or jealous, etc. and we reassure them that bad feelings usually pass.
We help children by Demonstrate Coping Skills, this enables them to remain calm and process a difficult situation clearly.
We Promote the Bright Side, we believe that optimism and resilience go hand in hand, and that optimism can be nurtured.
We Embrace Mistakes—Theirs and ours, this helps promote a growth mind set and gives children a key message, that mistakes help them learn.
Model Resilience by sharing our feelings and overcoming challenges.
We promote Outdoor play, exercise and being outdoors helps strengthen.
Resilient children are more likely to take healthy risks, they are naturally curious, brave, and trusting of their instincts. They know their limits and they push themselves to step outside of their comfort zones. This helps them reach for their long-term goals and it helps them solve problems independently.
Together we can help children build resilience and confront uncertainty by teaching them to solve problems independently.
A Love for learning is an intrinsic ambition in all children, it is quite different from just studying to earn a grade or to please parents or teachers.
We Share learning experiences with our children by becoming involved, and learning alongside them, we invite children to share their opinions and knowledge with each other.
We encourage creativity by providing opportunities for children to use a variety of tools to draw, write, or record videos, which help children to express their learning in their unique way.
We Make learning meaningful, by helping children make connections to their lives. We encourage interpretations that make sense to them.
We Bring the world in, by using online tools, we do not confine learning to the classroom but to the extended community and wider world.
We Demonstrate our passion for learning, we believe that if we love learning, our children will too! We inspire enthusiasm through sharing and interacting with parents, family members and practitioners.
We Respect our children, we do not expect the same from every child, we make sure we know where each is in their learning journey, we Listen to their conversation and value their thinking. We show an interest, and we know every child’s story.
We Provide variation for our child by coming up with ideas and new ways for then to practice their skills and share their ideas, we plan for multiple intelligences and different learning styles to engage all our children.
We encourage children to explore, question and wonder! by inviting them to a new topic with a strong provocation which inspires their curiosity.
We plan and play a variety of games. We make sure every game has a learning goal. explicit to the children’s needs and interests. We Make it fun!
We Encourage our children to be responsible for their own learning by giving them choices and letting them make their own decisions and solve their own problems.
Those who develop a love of learning at an early age continue the process throughout their lives and are generally more successful, interesting, and happier people.