The term after your child turns 9 months you may be eligible to claim 30 hours free funding from your local council. All children are entitled to 15 hours free funding the term after they turn 3 years old. The terms start in January, April and September.
To check how much you can claim please visit: Childcare Choices | 30 Hours Free Childcare, Tax-Free Childcare and More | Help with Costs | GOV.UK
FEEE is paid to Cliffe House for 38 weeks per year for eligible children aged 9 months to 4 years, payment starts the term after they become eligible. The funding amount is deducted from your monthly fees. The 38 weeks of FEEE can be spread over the whole year for children that attend nursery all year round.
FEEE sessions are not available during school holidays, therefore extra sessions will be charged at our full rate.
If your child is eligible for FEEE you will be given a code that you will need to bring into nursery for us to check and we’ll also need your national insurance number and date of birth. You will be asked to sign a ‘Parent Agreement’ and we can then claim the funding on your behalf.
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS) is made up essentially of seven ‘Areas of Learning and Development’. The areas are divided into three Prime areas and four Specific areas. These together make up the skills, knowledge and experiences aimed to support babies and children as they grow, learn and develop.
The Prime areas begin to develop very quickly in response to relationships and experiences and run through and support learning in all other areas. The prime areas are fundamental throughout the EYFS as they are aimed to support children in gaining confidence in the following:
Helping children to interact effectively and develop positive attitudes towards themselves and others.
We encourage children to share, take turns and have respect for each other regardless of culture and belief.
Communication will be developed with experiences which naturally support children’s interaction, both verbally and non-verbally. We plan activities carefully, building confidence with repetitive songs and rhymes, lots of speaking and listening from both children and carers.
Providing children with opportunities to be active and interactive. Developing their co-ordination, control and confidence. Children will be supported in understanding the importance of physical activity and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
The Specific areas include essential skills and knowledge. They ‘grow’ out of the prime areas and provide important contexts for learning through the following:
Enables children to explore senses, colour, texture, shape and form as well as develop creativity. We plan and play with a wide range of media and materials as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities.
Encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to encourage mark making and early letter formation. Children access a wide range of reading materials (books, poems and other written text) to ignite their interests and quiet reading areas are always popular.
We encourage children to explore their world, caring for plants and respecting all living things. They learn about wildlife and can plant, nurture and harvest their own vegetables in our garden plots.
Providing children with the opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems. Children will gain understanding of shape, space and measure.
From building sand castles to counting peas, everything is embraced as a time to nurture children’s natural thirst for learning.
The way in which observe, plan and create opportunities for your children at Cliffe House has recently changed. We have embraced our ‘paperless’ methods of pedagogy around observation, assessment, planning and learning journals.
Practitioners have the freedom to use their wealth of knowledge and experience they have gained from working closely with children. They instantly respond with ‘right here, right now’ to support the thinking, learning and development without documenting it first and planning in advance. Observation, assessment and planning is undertaken to support the children’s learning, this enables staff to constantly ‘scaffold’ their learning, challenge them and progress towards the Early Learning Goals.