EGA's Early Years Intent

At Eldon Grove Academy we want every child to have every opportunity to experience success in each learning episode.

We believe our Early Years children are born with great potential and because of this we want to give our unique and incredible young people a range of learning experiences designed to help them thrive!  

Our intention is to provide an enriched, safe and exciting environment that has ‘happiness and the well – being’ of our youngest learners at its heart. We are confident that we are successful at this when we observe the beams on their faces as they enjoy coming through our doors! 

Eldon Grove’s Early Years provision caters for the Unique Child. It is our intent to meet the needs of all children and their families. We intend to embrace a child’s uniqueness (moving on from what their families and prior providers teach us about their child!) whilst nurturing their interests, developing their independence, teaching them skills and extending their knowledge and understanding.  At Eldon Grove it is our intention to develop positive and strong partnerships with parents/carers that are based on trust, transparency and mutual respect. We use these relationships to tailor our service to the specific needs of individual children. 

Within the Early Years we aim to give our children (aged between three and five) EXPERIENCES which ensure they have the foundations to build upon throughout the other years of primary school whilst at the same time experiences that support making them ‘life ready’!  

We believe that our young learners at Eldon Grove Academy should feel like partners who are involved in the planning process of their own learning— we work together to discover the sparks that EXCITE them, recognise what they are interested in learning more about whilst at the same time building their confidence so they can share with others what they already know.  This approach to planning is developed across our Early Key Stage.  

Our Early Years thematic curriculum is intended to be fluid –  forever changing practice to meet the wants, interests and needs of the child! The curriculum is designed with the intention of helping children acquire new knowledge in order to learn ever more complex skills, giving them opportunities to practice and apply them over time, in order to master them. The curriculum is designed with sequenced progression of knowledge and skills from entering Nursery to the end of the Reception year. 

 Our curriculum is intended to excite our learners! It begins or ends each half term with a ‘Big Bang’ to introduce a theme and generates excitement about the learning to come or we hold a ‘Celebration’ at the end of the theme as a way of reflecting on the learning and celebrating their achievements. Throughout we always ensure the children have opportunities to see how their learning can support them through the use of ’real time’ visits and/or experiences which promote aspirations (e.g. Visiting local business) and provide experiences that some children may otherwise not have. 

At Eldon Grove Academy continuous provision is carefully planned and is intended to enable our children to learn skills, challenge their thinking and help embed concepts in our enabling environment. It also provides the context for a variety of learning conversations between children and practitioners with rich opportunities for modelling and extending speech and vocabulary. It is our intent that within the learning environment children also develop our key learning attributes and behaviours. Environments in our Early Years are carefully planned to impact upon children’s engagement, independence, collaboration, self-confidence, resilience and curiosity.  

In Eldon Grove Academy Early Years we intend to make a mess! — We are equipped for our children to be explorers in our ‘all weather school’ and know the importance of sensory experiences which support the overall development of a child. It is our intent to ensure children ‘engage with these materials’ (which children may not experience otherwise) in our safe and engaging learning environment. 

Our long term plans can be found by clicking the links below: