All registered childcare settings in England – nurseries, childminders, nursery schools; pre-schools and childcare on domestic premises - are expected to deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage framework with a clear focus on supporting children’s numeracy and enjoyment of maths from a very early age. The word in enjoyment is key to the approach early years takes in supporting our youngest children to have fun whilst growing their understanding and confidence in numbers.
The EYFS states “mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and substraction problems and to describe shapes, spaces and measures”1
The EYFS is not as prescriptive a curriculum as the national curriculum. Its focus is on setting out the developmental stages a child should achieve over the first five years of their life and how an early years practitioner can best support that development. There is a strong focus on practitioners knowing each child in their care – through observation, assessment and partnership with their parents/carer – and using this knowledge to tailor the learning opportunities to that child, building on the activities they like to do, planning next steps and regularly observing progress so it can be built upon.
Numeracy and literacy are core components of the EYFS but valued equally with other physical, social and emotional areas of development. This demands an integrated and personalised approach to planning a child’s development, building on what they like to do and ensuring that every activity is an opportunity to explore numbers as well as many other things. Anyone who knows a two year old will understand how critical it
is to support them to learn and develop in their own style. If Lucy is a constructor and likes building ‘stuff’ and knocking it down; then the early years practitioner will ensure through this activity Lucy also gets to explore numbers; ideally colours, size and shape too – all while she is still having fun building her tower and knocking it down again.
Numeracy in the early years is so much more than just counting and number recognition, something that can surprise many parents as well as some new to the profession. It’s also about shape, pattern, space, measurements and solving real-life problems. All practitioners know that babies are competent learners from birth. At the heart of the EYFS is the assumption that pre-school early education should enable children to explore a wide range of concepts to support them to gain the foundations they need to be ready to learn when hey start school.
