Every day's exciting in Reception. Every day is busy, loud and
filled with questions. A child's first year in school should be
all of those things. It's far too easy to fall into the trap of
saying that Reception is about preparing children for "big
school". As if it's a practice year so that when they are in "big
school" they'll be ready to sit still and listen, because they're
in big school now. This was certainly the point of view when I
was at school. I would argue that there's far too much time given
in school to "getting ready" for the next stage of school. When
do we get the chance to stop and really enjoy ourselves and
reflect on where we are in this moment now? Childhood is not just
a rehearsal for adulthood, it's not a time to keep telling
children "you need to do this now so that when you're an adult
you can do this." Children aren't adults now, they're children
now, and they're only children for a fleeting moment of time. But
their memories of childhood will last a lifetime.
At Willaston we believe in educating the whole child, in developing happy, confident individuals who are ready to deal with anything life throws at them. Who are equipped to think for themselves, to find out for themselves and to take care of themselves. We focus on building children up, reminding them what they're brilliant at, how amazing and strong they are, how adaptable they are. And when they find something that they don't know how to do, we remind them of all the ways they've overcome problems before and talk about what they've done previously that might work in this situation too. School and childhood should be filled with happy memories and success stories, so instead of always thinking ahead to that blurry future where we don't really know what people will need, let's focus on building strong happy foundations, so that when our children face the future, they can remember their strengths, their successes and their ways of coping with anything.
With that in mind, it's been a while since we shared a video of a standard day in our Early Years classroom. So we hope you enjoy this video, of a very normal day enjoying, exploring and questioning the world around us.