Early Years
Child Development
Early Years
At EYC, we know it is our responsibility to ensure our youngest students have the very best start in their educational journey. We understand the importance of this time in a child’s development and so we use our expertise in early years’ pedagogy to lay the strongest of foundations for our children. Play is crucial in a child’s development; it is an integral part of a child’s Early Years Foundation Stage and supports their learning journey. Young children develop many skills through the power of play: language, emotions, creativity and social skills. Play also helps to nurture imagination and give a child a sense of adventure. Through this, they can learn essential skills such as problem solving, working with others, sharing and much more.
The Importance of Play
Learning Through Play
Carefully designed ‘learning through play’ opportunities enable our children to discover their own interests, abilities and limitations, as they are encouraged to imagine, investigate, take risks and explore. Learning through play also helps our youngest learners to develop their memory skills, build vocabulary and practise interacting with others. Purposeful play provides teachers with information regarding students’ development and particular interests and is valuable information that is used to inform future planning of learning tasks for our early years students.
Just a few examples of how our children learn through play are:
Construction Toys
It may just look like a wooden block or piece of lego, but construction toys can provide opportunities for children to learn about spatial awareness, the properties of shapes, size, balance, pattern, comparisons, whilst also helping them to develop a broad range of skills, including problem solving, perseverance, conflict-resolution and fine motor skills, amongst others.
Role Play, Imaginary Play and Small Worlds
Role play, imaginary play and creating small worlds are fantastic for developing literacy skills and new knowledge, creativity, practising social interactions…the list goes on!
‘At One with Nature’
Our students are encouraged to use natural resources for their learning. Stones used for counting or creating patterns, nature used for art, sticks transformed into magic wands…all of this highlights to our children that learning is fun and opportunities can be found all around us!
Learning At Home
At EYC, we work closely with our families to ensure that opportunities for ‘learning through play’ are not confined to school. After all, we all learn best when having fun!
GIS Learning Culture
Our GIS Learning Culture permeates across our whole community, with students, staff and parents all learning and growing together. In Early Years, our staff engage in regular, high quality professional development to ensure their practice is constantly evolving to benefit those who matter most: our children. What’s more, we regularly host Parent Workshops to support and develop the understanding of our parent community. After all, the greatest success comes when we all work together.
GIS Learning Culture
Our GIS Learning Culture permeates across our whole community, with students, staff and parents all learning and growing together. In Early Years, our staff engage in regular, high quality professional development to ensure their practice is constantly evolving to benefit those who matter most: our children. What’s more, we regularly host Parent Workshops to support and develop the understanding of our parent community. After all, the greatest success comes when we all work together.
