EYFS

Welcome to EYFS

We are delighted to welcome your children as they begin their first years of primary school! This marks the start of a wonderful adventure filled with curiosity, discovery, and learning.

Our curriculum will cover a range of engaging topics, including:

🌟 Who am I?
👮 Who helps us?
🎉 What is a celebration?
🐣 What is a life cycle?
🌱 How does a plant grow?
🌊 What is in the sea?

Throughout the year, our goal is to foster a love of learning and spark curiosity in every child. We’re especially excited to do this in our newly refurbished classroom and outdoor learning area!

Meet the Team

Miss Smith will be leading the class, supported by our fantastic team of teaching assistants: Mrs Crute, Miss Race, Ms Griffiths, and Miss Hume. Together, we are committed to creating a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment where your children can thrive.

What’s Coming Up This Year

Autumn Term:

We’ll begin by settling in and getting to know your children. Then, we’ll explore the changing season of Autumn, learn about the important people who help in our community, and prepare for the festive season. We can’t wait to welcome you in to watch our nativity performance!

Spring Term:

This term, we’ll dive into celebrations from different cultures and explore the fascinating life cycle of animals—focusing especially on chickens.

Summer Term:

As the weather warms up, we’ll turn our attention to plants and how they grow. Later, we’ll explore the wonders of the sea, learn about sun safety, and even have some fun learning about mermaids and pirates!

Early Years Provision

We offer 15-hour morning sessions for 3-year-olds, as well as 30-hour full-time places for eligible families.

Here’s to a year full of growth, laughter, and learning—we can’t wait to get started!

Welcome to Early YearsNursery Application Form
Supporting Reading at home

If you are interested in applying for a place at our school for any of our age groups, please contact the school office.

About us!

Throughout our Early Years Unit, we provide high quality early years education to all children. We support and encourage children to:

Be themselves – have their own thoughts and feelings. It’s good to be different!
Be kind to others and show respect to objects as well as people;
Develop their independence;
Have a go – it may not go how you want it to but it’s great that you have tried!
Keep trying when it gets tricky, you’ll get there!
Be creative, curious and use their imagination;
Explore and take risks to discover their likes, dislikes and the world surrounding them via first hand experiences;
Communicate for help when they need it, ask questions and express their opinions.

Here at Dean Bank Primary and Nursery School, we know that each child has vast potential. Throughout our school, we do the utmost we can to ensure that every child can reach their potential and beyond, whilst helping to develop both educational and life skills that can enable children to ‘believe, achieve and soar with pride’.

Our neutral, warm and welcoming Early Years Unit is where you will find the youngest children at Dean Bank Primary and Nursery School; our Nursery (3-4 years old) and Reception (4-5 years old). Primarily, Nursery and Reception aged children share the same space. We also have a large outdoor area which enables children to play on a louder and larger scale, whilst also enabling the children develop problem-solving skills, resilience and observe varying environments. We appreciate that children love to play outdoors so aim to use outside as much as we can.

The Early Years – what we do:

Children are born ready to explore and discover the world around them, using play as a tool to learn and develop; Play is one of the most important ways in which young children gain essential knowledge and skills (Unicef, 2018). Playing allows basic concepts (such as communication, physical and social skills) to be developed, creating pathways and interests for future learning as they progress through school. This is why in the Early Years at Dean Bank, our curriculum is built around play and the interests of children – every child has the right to play.

Staff are proud to deliver an inclusive, enriching curriculum and support the welfare of all children. They also support children through modelling play and positive behaviour; creating enabling and enriching environments as well as through providing excellent opportunities (both inside and outside of our school community) that stimulate and challenge children. As a result, children develop holistically – allowing them to become engaged, independent and resilient thinkers, learners and successful young people.

Staff use the ‘Development Matters’ and “Birth to 5 Matters” documents to assess and track the development of children, endeavouring to support their needs, interests and abilities.

Furthermore, the ‘Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage’ also applies. The legislation sets standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five, providing guidance and information to staff on areas including learning/development, staff:child ratios, child welfare and safety. ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ also states the rules and regulations all setting staff and governors must adhere to, in order to promote the welfare of young people and safeguard children effectively.

The wider community

We know that when we work in partnership with parents/carers, children reap the benefits, allowing them to feel safe and comfortable within our setting. We strive to have quality, positive relationships with all of our parents/carers, to ensure that their child’s learning and holistic development journey is one they are satisfied with and that their child’s individual needs are met.

We encourage parents/carers to be connected to our communication services – Class Dojo and Seesaw. This enables guardians to keep in touch with us, find out any news and find out what children have been up to. When your child starts with us, you will receive information on how to connect to these communication platforms.

Further support by working in partnership with additional staff members, the Senior Leadership Team, Governors and the wider Dean Bank community enables us to further support the holistic development and education of children.