An exciting early years curriculum from Cornerstones Education

Broad and balanced coverage

We’ve carefully designed our EYFS curriculum to help you meet national early years requirements whilst still prioritising a play-based ethos and providing broad and balanced across all areas of learning. The curriculum includes over 20 fully resourced projects for Nursery and Reception, aligned with the Early Learning Goals and Development Matters for England and the statements of what matters in the Curriculum for Wales.

Building the foundations of learning

The early years curriculum projects have been written in sequence and provide progression across a child’s time in the EYFS. Topics are vibrant and designed to inspire awe and wonder about the world. We have carefully identified key skills, core knowledge and vocabulary within each project to provide the foundations for learning and prepare children for KS1 and beyond.

Play-based and language-rich

The early years curriculum projects have been created with children’s physical, social and emotional development in mind. They encourage a play-based approach and offer a balance between teacher-directed and child-led learning. We’ve put children’s language development at the heart of the curriculum, so each project is built around stories and includes a wealth of communication activities.

‘We’ve found the structure of new projects around key texts has given us a clear focus for language. We’ve got amazing writing pieces from those activities.’

Lauren Ward,

Reception teacher, Wigan

Early reading development

Each project contains a story pack to support early reading development. We have chosen stories with engaging illustrations and strong narratives that will extend children’s vocabulary. This collection of stories provides opportunities for children to associate with the characters or help them understand the lives, experiences and perspectives of others. Each story pack follows a structure so children can hear the story multiple times and build their understanding as they listen. We aim to provide children with a bank of quality stories they love so they can revisit and retell them independently. The story packs are fully resourced and provide teacher information to guide practitioners through each stage.

Pre-literacy programme

To further support nursery and preschool children with early reading development, we provide termly pre-literacy packs. This fully resourced programme supports children to develop the communication, language and literacy skills needed as they progress into the Reception year.

Support for mixed-age classes

We understand the challenges of teaching a mixed EYFS and KS1 class. To support children of all ages to meet curriculum requirements at an appropriate level, we have created a series of mixed-age planning documents.

How to teach the projects

The early years curriculum offers you a sequence of main and shorter ‘companion’ projects. All activities in the projects are differentiated for both Nursery and Reception and provide supporting enhanced provision ideas. To help you make each lesson your own, the content is completely editable on Curriculum Maestro, our online curriculum platform. To provide a consistent pedagogical approach, every project follows Cornerstones’ unique four-stage approach to learning: Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Each project begins with a memorable experience to hook the children in and spark their curiosity. The Engage stage provides context for learning and children will have time to explore the themes within the project. The Develop stage is where children acquire fundamental knowledge and skills. Each activity links to an enhanced provision idea so that the children can revisit and explore their learning independently. After developing children’s skills and knowledge across all aspects of learning, the Innovate stage provides opportunities for children to apply them in new and exciting ways. It supports them to make links with their experiences, work collaboratively and solve problems together. Finally, in the Express stage, children have the chance to reflect on their learning and share their experiences with others.

The role of resources

We believe that the best approach to learning in the early years is through practical, experiential and play-based activities. However, where appropriate, the new projects include carefully designed, child-focused resources to support practical tasks.

‘The new early years projects are structured really well and offer a good balance of teacher-directed and child-led activities. What we enjoy about Cornerstones is that it offers us that flexibility.’