Early Years

A very warm welcome to our Early Years page. We are a large Early Years setting that includes a Nursery provision and four Reception classes. In our Nursery we offer a part time morning place, a part time afternoon place or a full-time place that includes a lunch club that has a small charge. We are proud of our purpose-built Nursery building that offers a nurturing environment that promotes independence and excitement as your child learns through play. Our Nursery provision starts the children on their learning journey at Hampton Infants. We support the children and families through a carefully planned transition programme that begins in the Summer term before your child starts with us. The Nursery team carry out home visits where we begin to build relationships and find out everything we can about what interests your child ensuring our curriculum is tailored to meet their needs. We then host a stay and play session before your child starts with us in early September. Our Nursery children are supported by a dedicated and skilled team consisting of a class teacher and two learning support assistants. The children have access to a large, enclosed garden that overlooks our Reception playground. The Nursery curriculum is carefully planned to ensure all pupils are ready for Reception by the end of the year. The children participate in weekly phonics, maths, PE and story sessions that promote language development, independence, a love of learning and play skills. The Nursery children often visit the main school for workshops too and recently enjoyed taking part in a Science workshop as part of Science week!

We have four Reception classes that consist of up to 30 children per class. Every class has a teacher and learning support assistant and their own classroom base as well as a large outdoor environment that all pupils can access throughout the day.  Although we are a large four form entry school there are huge benefits to this. There are 120 children that can all play together and make friends, we have a large and open outdoor space that supports learning through play and we have a large staff that support all pupils throughout the day too.

Our transition programme for Reception is very carefully planned to ensure all pupils are able to join us happy and ready to learn. This begins in the summer term when our EYFS team contact any settings the children may be at prior to starting school to begin to find out all about your child and how best we can support them at school. We invite families to join us for a stay and play session outside in our large garden where the EYFS team are there to support play and begin to get to know the children. We offer home visits in September to continue building those relationships that are crucial to ensuring your child feels confident starting school and we use the home visit to find out what your child loves to learn about and play with. We then build on those interests once they start with us in early September ensuring your child’s start to school is successful. By working together, we aim to make this the best possible start to a love of life-long learning. It is a privilege to be sharing your child’s first stepping stone into education.

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework, supported by the non-statutory Development Matters. The EYFS educational programmes provide us with the curriculum framework which is then built upon further to decide the wider learning content that best fits the interests and needs of our children.

Language development within a language rich environment is at the absolute heart of our curriculum with indoor and outdoor learning environments being carefully planned to stimulate and enable conversation. Children learn through play and careful modelling from adults and they develop problem solving skills in response to bouncing back from challenges. Where possible our children are given the opportunity to learn through first hand experiences, such as growing their own herbs to utilise in real and imaginary cooking scenarios, and exploring life cycles through caterpillars turning into butterflies in their classrooms.

Our Reception day is busy with lots of learning through play planned alongside whole class teaching sessions. The day begins with a soft start where pupils arrive at school between 8.40am and 8.55am. This ensures that day is calm and pupils can chat to their friends or teachers before they start their learning. Then at 9am it is time for phonics where pupils are provided with the opportunity to practise applying their phonic knowledge to read and spell. The children then learn through play, supported by skilled EYFS staff before stopping for a maths lesson where pupils learn practically to apply mathematical skills. Lunchtime is carefully planned to ensure all pupils can enjoy a calm environment to enjoy a freshly cooked lunch in the hall. The afternoons are topic based with pupils enjoying a PE lesson once a week, helicopter stories (drama-based story telling) in our reading den and a firm favourite ‘Forest Friday’s’ in our large outdoor environment. We always end our day singing and sharing a story before the children go home excited to share news about their busy day. In the summer term our Reception pupils start attending celebration assembly and singing assembly where they love seeing the Year 1 and 2 pupils.

We use Tapestry to share photos and videos of the learning that takes place in our Nursery and Reception and it is a great opportunity to share all of the amazing learning at home too. Alongside the carefully planned curriculum we also plan additional learning opportunities such as ‘Science week’, ‘Arts week’, workshops like ‘Singing hands’ and ‘Bounce Beyond’ as well as author visits, school trips and so much more!

We are so proud of the Early Years children and their incredible attitude and enthusiasm for learning.