Phoenix Preschool, Carries Hall, Rush Green Road, Romford, Essex

The Foundation Stage curriculum for children three to five years.
Children start to learn about the world around them from the moment they are born. The care and education offered by our setting helps children to continue to do this by providing all of the children with interesting activities that are appropriate for their age and stage of development.
For children between the ages of three and five years, the setting provides a curriculum for the foundation stage of education. This curriculum is set out in a document, published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Department for Education and Skills, called Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage. We follow this guidance.

The guidance divides children's learning and development into six areas:

personal, social and emotional development

communication, language and literacy development

mathematical development

knowledge and understanding of the world

physical development

creative development

For each area, the guidance sets out early learning goals. These goals state what it is expected that children will know and be able to do by the end of the reception year of their education.
The Foundation Stage curriculum complements Birth to Three Matters, building on each of the four entitlements, as described above, to further promote children's learning and development.
For each early learning goal, the guidance sets out stepping stones, which describe the stages through which children are likely to pass as they move to achievement of the goal. Our setting uses the stepping stones that lead to the early learning goals to help us to trace each child's progress and to enable us to provide the right activities to help all of the children to achieve and progress.

Personal, social and emotional development
This area of children's development covers:
having a positive approach to learning and finding out about the world around them;
having confidence in themselves and their ability to do things, and valuing their own achievements;
being able to get on, work and make friendships with other people, both children and adults;
becoming aware of - and being able to keep to - the rules which we all need to help us to look after ourselves, other people and our environment;
being able to dress and undress themselves, and look after their personal hygiene needs; and
being able to expect to have their ways of doing things respected and to respect other people's ways of doing things.

Communication, language and literacy
This area of children's development covers:
being able to use conversation with one other person, in small groups and in large groups to talk with and listen to others;
adding to their vocabulary by learning the meaning of - and being able to use - new words;
being able to use words to describe their experiences;
getting to know the sounds and letters that make up the words we use;
listening to - and talking about - stories;
knowing how to handle books and that they can be a source of stories and information;
knowing the purposes for which we use writing; and
making their own attempts at writing.
Mathematical development
This area of children's development covers:
building up ideas about how many, how much, how far and how big;
building up ideas about patterns, the shape of objects and parts of objects, and the amount of space taken up by objects;
starting to understand that numbers help us to answer questions about how many, how much, how far and how big;
building up ideas about how to use counting to find out how many; and
being introduced to finding the result of adding more or taking away from the amount we already have.

Knowledge and understanding of the world
This area of children's development covers:
finding out about the natural world and how it works;
finding out about the made world and how it works;
learning how to choose - and use - the right tool for a task;
learning about computers, how to use them and what they can help us to do;
starting to put together ideas about past and present and the links between them;
beginning to learn about their locality and its special features; and
learning about their own and other cultures.

Physical development
This area of children's development covers:
gaining control over the large movements that they can make with their arms, legs and bodies, so that they can run, jump, hop, skip, roll, climb, balance and lift;
gaining control over the small movements they can make with their arms, wrists and hands, so that they can pick up and use objects, tools and materials; and
learning about the importance of - and how to look after - their bodies.

Creative development
This area of children's development covers:
using paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play to express their ideas and feelings; and
becoming interested in the way that paint, materials, music, dance, words, stories and role-play can be used to express ideas and feelings.Play helps young children to learn and develop through doing and talking, which research has shown to be the means by which young children think. Our setting uses the stepping stones leading to the early learning goals to plan and provide a range of play activities which help children to make progress in each of the areas of learning and development. In some of these activities children decide how they will use the activity and, in others, an adult takes the lead in helping the children to take part in the activity. In all activities information from the stepping stones and the early learning goals has been used to decide what equipment to provide and how to provide it.