What is EYFS?

Belvedere International Nursery follows the internationally recognised and standardised British Early Years Foundation Stage birth to 5 years curriculum.

For each age group a set of structured benchmarks related to the early learning goals (strands) for every area of learning (subject) are used to assess your child in order to drive their learning experience each week. Children are assessed against these age and stage appropriate benchmarks throughout their time at BIN order to provide individual tracking of their progress and attainment.

“The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early years’ providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.”

UK Department of Education, Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, Setting the Standards for learning development and care for children from birth to five .

Topic based learning designed to excite each age group additionally supports inquiry moving your child from potential understanding to actual knowledge.

Why choose the British EYFS curriculum in UAE?

1. Helps supply the country’s human capital of the future – the next generation’s workforce.
2. Helps social reconstruction – creating and shaping the experiences of the young to help improve their habits and therefore form a better future generation.
3. Supports cultural reproduction – transmitting cultural values from generation to generation.
4. Promotes cultural diversity – learning to live together peacefully as one human group on one planet with limited resources we all have to protect and share.
5. Promotes self-actualisation – helps the youth of today realise their own potential by providing multiple experiences to support their brain growth and holistic development.

We at BIN take all these points to heart. We strive to produce the best learning environment to stimulate and excite the leader in all our children in superb, state of the art facilities. Visit our Nursery today to see what makes us a leader in education.

Prime Areas of Learning

The three prime areas help children to develop, learn and become ready for school.

1. Personal, social and emotional development
   This area of learning focuses on making relationships, self-confidence and self-awareness, managing feelings and behaviour. The benchmarks cover learning independence, working in a group, cooperation, personal hygiene, self-esteem, social skills and being able to concentrate on a task.
2. Physical development
   This area of learning emphasises moving and handling, health and self-care. The benchmarks cover active and interactive opportunities, fine and gross motor skills including balance, control, movement and coordination, loco motor and non-loco motor skills, games, drama and dance in relation to a healthy balanced lifestyle
3. Communication and language
   This area of learning concentrates on listening and attention, understanding and speaking. The benchmarks cover expressing oneself through speaking and covers group work, building vocabulary and use of grammar. Everything the children do at BIN supports language and communication. Besides English, language and communication classes in both French and Arabic support our multicultural school group. Additionally, The four specific areas of learning and development support the characteristics of effective learning – playing and exploring, active learning, creating and thinking critically.

Literacy
This area of learning focuses on reading and writing. The benchmarks include encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children have access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems etc) to ignite their interest. The following structures are used to support literacy at BIN:

a. Phonics system: We use the Jolly Phonics (JP) system to teach phonemes and graphemes. JP has proven to be one of the best systems when learning more than one language because it combines all three learning styles – auditory, visual and kinaesthetic.

b. Reading program: We use onset and rime, CVCs, blends and sight words to complement the Oxford Reading Tree and other internationally respected reading scheme.

c. Numerous websites and apps designed to support early literacy.
d. Reading stories from the library and listening to teachers reading with props and showing comprehension of the story.
e. Listening to and understanding stories, songs and rhymes
f. Participating in dramatic plays with reading props.
g. Emergent writing techniques.
h. Artefact boxes and labeling.

1. Mathematics
   This area of learning covers numbers, shape, space and measures. The benchmarks focus on problem solving and creative thinking combined with real life experiences to support mathematical knowledge and understanding. Children sort, order, match, compare and contrast, use addition and subtraction, understand time, count, learn about shapes and colour and discover weight, length and volume.
2. Understanding the world
   This area of learning focuses on people and communities, the world and technology. The benchmarks cover the physical world and the community through opportunities to explore, observe and discover science, health and safety, ecology and the environment, nature, social studies, people, places and IT helping children understand and appreciate the world in which they live.
3. Expressive arts and design
   This area of learning centers on exploring and using media and material and being imaginative. The benchmarks enable children to explore a range of media and material, texture and colour, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts and ideas through a variety of activities in art, music and movement, drama, dance, role-play, through producing models and design.

        AT BELVEDERE INTERNATIONAL NURSERY we believe that :

• Learning is accelerated when a parent / family / guardian is involved in their child’s learning
• School is one part of the lifelong learning process,
• Learning is enriched through multiple experiences including an enriched curriculum, regular field trips, special days, cooperative learning experiences and use of technology
• The child’s learning style needs to be taken into account and teaching is aimed at the child’s individual needs
• Small group learning should occur allowing one to one contact and extension support and assistance programs
• Learning is improved when it is related to the child’s life experiences
• Learning is enhanced when the community supports learning