Our Early Years curriculum
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is taught across Pre-School and Reception at Boundary Oak.
As a through school offering a holistic education from ages 2 to 16, we encourage connections between year groups throughout the school year. Pre-School and Reception classes frequently collaborate on activities, including weekly forest sessions, sports days, and our much-loved annual EYFS Christmas Concert and Pre-School Graduation.
Play-based learning
Children enjoy play-based activities and outdoor learning with their friends in the school’s beautiful grounds.
Careful planning means children feel they are playing freely while gaining knowledge and skills to ensure progression throughout the year.
We start by building fine motor skills through activities such as clay modelling. Children also build gross motor skills by digging, climbing, balancing and mark-making. These foundational skills strengthen young bodies for Pre-Prep.
Pre-School Curriculum
In Little Acorns, we focus on three prime areas of the EYFS curriculum:
- Communication and language
- Personal, social, and emotional development
- Physical development
We are outdoors as much as possible, using the weather, seasons, and planet to inspire learning.
Children start to receive specialist-led lessons in French, forest school, PE, and music, enriching their classroom learning and sparking curiosity. These sessions are seamlessly woven into our termly seasons and celebrations, creating a dynamic and inspiring educational experience.
Forest school
Pupils enjoy the wonders of nature through forest school, a core part of our outdoor learning programme set within our beautiful grounds. Led by specialist forest school leaders, these sessions are child-led and interest-driven, focusing on nature-inspired themes such as foraging, hibernation, or seasonal changes over a six-week period.
Children engage in exciting activities like building dens, identifying bugs, and creating with mark-making and craft tools—all designed to nurture creativity, resilience, and a deep connection to the natural world. Our forest school approach inspires curiosity, collaboration, and confidence, providing pupils with invaluable skills that extend far beyond the classroom.
Curriculum - Reception
We deliver the EYFS curriculum through our Nine Aspirations, basing the curriculum around the children’s interests through fun mini-projects incorporating all areas of the curriculum. Examples include:
- Create your own book
- Make a model of a tree
- Plant and seed
- Display an art exhibition
- Plan and prepare a picnic with friends
- Build and complete an obstacle course
The curriculum in action
Daily phonics sessions in Reception are vibrant, interactive and designed to ignite a love of reading and writing. Using engaging methods like songs, actions and games, children explore the sounds that form the foundation of language.
Outdoor learning
Our Early Years pupils enjoy immersive lessons in a dedicated outdoor space, where learning is shaped by the seasons and the weather.
With a structured curriculum, children explore nature through activities like studying fungi, flora, and fauna, caring for our bees, or embarking on scavenger hunts.
We also enjoy fun, hands-on experiences such as campfire cooking, roasting marshmallows, and creating bug habitats. Collaborating with our Pre-School during these sessions allows the opportunity to share our love for adventure.
