In this area o f learning, children make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

We create a ‘floorbook’ in both Lower Foundation and Upper Foundation classrooms to celebrate our learning during each week.  This is readily available in our setting so that children can review and reflect on their learning throughout the year and also see the passage of time in their Upper Foundation journey.

Our Upper Foundation ‘timeline’ is updated throughout the year so that we can begin to see the passage of time and have an early understanding of ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’.  Copies of photographs linked to each event are placed in the ‘Memory Box’ on our snack table which gives us lots of opportunities to talk to our friends and adults about our year at school.

We explore our own personal histories and then in Upper Foundation begin to think about how life was different in the past. We have looked at historical artefacts from the home and compared these to what we use today and also enjoyed comparing toys from the past to those that we play with today.

We spend lots of time exploring where we live — our houses, school and what is around us in our local community, before beginning to compare Ossett to other environments in our country and around the world. We have loved learning about our link school in Tanzania and comparing how life is different for the children who attend ACT Mara Primary School.

We celebrated  ‘Earth Day’ with the rest of school — our focus in EYFS was to learn about the impact of plastic pollution.  Our topic at the time was the ‘Seaside and the Sea’ so we shared the story ‘Fish’ to help us to understand the impact of plastic pollution on ocean habitats and coastlines around the world.

Our focus learning for Safer Internet Day this year was to recognise when our screen changes to help us to keep safe.

Children in EYFS love to be scientists!  Our indoor and outdoor classrooms provide a wealth of activities that encourage every child to explore, problem solve, observe, predict, think, make decisions and talk about the world around them.