Welcome to EYFS at Heathlands Primary Academy. Our dedicated team of practitioners consists of Mrs Purshall, Mr Overton-Priestley, Miss Robinson, Mrs Clarke, Mrs Wilkes, Mrs Hyde and Mrs Perks. Across our EYFS, all staff contribute to developing a nurturing environment where children feel secure, valued, and prepared to embrace the positives as well as the challenges during their journey throughout school. Our team within EYFS prioritise a holistic approach to learning, placing both continuous and enhanced provision at the heart of our practice. 

We understand that children thrive in environments that encourage exploration and curiosity. We know that carefully planned continuous and enhanced provision, alongside open-ended learning opportunities will give our children confidence and a desire to learn. Our carefully curated learning environments both inside and outside offer a balance between structured learning and free choice, promoting creativity, independence, and enjoyment when exploring new ideas. We have worked hard to develop an outdoor environment as well as an outdoor ethos and children across Nursery and Reception use outdoors every day, come rain or shine! Outdoor learning offers non-threatening learning opportunities as well as space to explore concepts that don’t lend themselves to an indoor environment- den building, obstacle course making, balance bike riding and transporting water are just a few of the opportunities children access in our outdoor area.   

Alongside our newly established enhanced provision unit (The Bloom Room) our developing use of British Sign Language across both Nursery and Reception demonstrates our commitment to supporting communication for every child. We strive to ensure that every child feels supported with communication; this is after all at the heart of all areas of learning.  

Both Nursery and Reception curriculums are carefully planned around captivating, high-quality texts. In addition, our Curriculum Promise extends beyond this, immersing children in the exploration of significant figures, historical events, festivals, authors, artists, composers, and much more. For example, children in EYFS explore the Lunar New Year, Diwali, Eid, Easter and Christmas; develop positive community links with a local residential home, experience visitors on career day and walk to, and become a member of, the local library.  

Aligned with our dedication to development within EYFS, we also promote the ‘Ready Steady Reception’ goals in nursery- a newly established set of skills identified by the Birmingham Early Years DLP project for children on entry to reception; We understand and strive for all children to achieve these goals before they start school.  

Children will also benefit from our well established RWI Phonics scheme, Mastering Number sessions, Talk for Write which develops storytelling as well as innovating skills, Concept Cat (a language programme within Nursery which teaches early verbal concepts) as well as in-house SALT support where needed.  

In Nursery, we start off with focus on nursery rhymes before delving into stories written by Eric Carle. As the Spring term unfolds, we read well-known stories such as ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and ‘Dear Zoo’, before progressing to a variety of traditional stories- our current favourite is ‘The enormous Turnip!’ Finally, in the Summer term, our literary exploration evolves to include books with a growing focus, such as ‘Titch’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, before finishing the year with our ‘People Who Help Us’ theme. 

In Reception, we start the year with stories about families and where people live, before moving onto stories set at nighttime- ‘Owl babies’ and ‘Can’t you sleep little Bear’ have proven particular favourites with the children! In Spring we move onto books where the characters go on a journey; ‘Rosie’s Walk’, ‘What the Ladybird heard’ and ‘Martha Maps it out’. We also read stories that tie in with our school values, particularly perseverance and our Spring term concludes with ‘The Little Red Hen’, ‘Zog’ and ‘The dot’ which demonstrate this value perfectly. Finally in the summer term, we look at Africa as a topic, reading ‘The Ugly Five’, ‘We’re going on a Lion Hunt’ and ‘We all went on Safari’- all books that take us on a magical journey through some of the countries in Africa.