The Foundation Phase

From the age of three the children work towards achieving outcomes in the seven areas outlined in the Foundation Phase. Framework for Children's Learning for 3 to 7-year-olds in Wales.

Through our topic planning we aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum centred around those areas of learning.  Children will engage in activities matched to their individual needs, that foster their ability to think independently and creatively – transferring learning & developing skills across curriculum areas.

Active Learning Through Structured, Continuous Play

The preschool child learns primarily through play. Discovering, exploring, and playing with materials in the immediate environment enables the child to formulate ideas about the world. These combine to give a mental model into which each fresh discovery can be fitted.

This play is interactive. The experiences leading to the formation of concepts may not focus on any one concept at a time, but can embrace several. Thus one play activity can contain several types of learning experience.

Through imaginative and social play the child learns to translate reality into symbols and to express and externalise inner conflicts and emotions in a socially acceptable way.

It is generally noted by all practitioners and researchers in the education of the young child that the essential urgent need to play is so intense, and the observable learning from this play is so absolute, that active learning, supported by adults, should best facilitate the child's acquisition of skills, concepts and attitudes.

Active learning is embedded in first hand experience where the child explores, experiments, investigates, where the adult provides, enables and supports, and where the process is as important as the product.