The roots of our Science curriculum at Fairfields begin in Foundation Stage through our ‘Understanding the World’ teaching. Understanding the World involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. Children in Early years at Fairfields learn to make healthy choices about food, drink, activity and toothbrushing to support their choices in later life.

Our Early Years curriculum enhances children’s personal experiences and increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – we place great importance in developing enquiring minds and thread scientific enquiry into our teaching and learning in a playful, fun and engaging way. Our curriculum encourages lots of talk about what we see, which in turn develops a wide vocabulary. We make predictions, test our ideas and find out ‘why?’

In Reception our children explore changing states of matter and the effects of freezing and melting when they undertake a mission to free Supertato from the Evil Pea trapped in ice! We read, ‘Don’t Put Your finger in the Jelly Nelly’ and observe the jelly making process, talking about what we can see. We melt chocolate, predict and observe what happens. In Nursery exploring forces through push and pull toys helps the children to learn how and why things work. Children learn how to plant seeds and care for growing plants. We investigate what’s in our garden and explore animals, their habitats, life cycles and join in with the Great British Bird Watch. Our children love observing chicks hatch from eggs first-hand, frogspawn changing over time and butterflies emerging from cocoons. We learn about rockpools at the seaside and ponds in gardens through non fiction books. Understanding the effect of changing seasons on the natural world around them is threaded through our teaching and learning in Early Years. Discussion and observation of what we can see, feel and hear around us enables our children to engage in first hand learning.

Our curriculum enables children to learn through a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems to foster their understanding of our ecologically diverse world. 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.

Our Early Years curriculum develops early Scientific skills and knowledge to equip our children for the next step of learning and later life.