History in the Early Years at Fairfields

Understanding the World involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The roots of our history curriculum can be found in the Foundation Stage through our ‘Understanding the World’ teaching. Our children begin to make sense of their own life-story and family history as we start both the Nursery and Reception years with a topic all about ‘ourselves’ to get to know each other. We make home links to produce family trees, make ‘growing up’ timelines, and compare and contrast adults and babies.

Our curriculum enables us to meet important members of society, such as police officers, nurses and firefighters and investigate how their uniforms and vehicles have changed over time. We learn about museums and handle historical artefacts like fossils and old telephones.

We learn through a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems to foster our children’s understanding of the culturally diverse world we live in. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. We know that enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension. We compare and contrast fictional and non-fictional historical figures from a range of cultures and times in storytelling and listen to what children say about them. We read about Guy Fawkes, Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole in non-fiction books and draw out common themes from stories, such as bravery, difficult choices, kindness and talk about children’s experiences with these themes.

In our Early Years, children are supported to comment on images of familiar situations from the past, like seaside holidays, and learn about significant events from history like Bonfire Night and Remembrance Day. We compare things from the past like modes of transport, clothing and talk about what they are like now.

As our Early years children move into Key Stage One, they are well prepared to continue building their Historical knowledge and understanding.