Curriculum | Early Years | Streatham & Clapham Prep School

The Early Years curriculum provides the foundations for a lifelong love of learning. It prepares our girls for the school journey ahead. The youngest girls initially learn through play, with the learning increasingly structured as they get older. This enables them to develop the social and academic skills needed to progress.

The Early Years Foundation curriculum is exactly that: a foundation. It begins in Nursery and continues throughout Reception after which our girls find themselves happy and well-prepared for Year 1 and beyond.

In small classes — and even smaller, focused-learning groups — our specially-qualified teachers develop the emotional, social and academic underpinnings that girls need for the next stage of their education.

• Our girls are taught phonics daily by a qualified teacher, in small groups. Nearly all of our girls are already on the reading journey before they get to Reception.
• The girls learn specialist subjects, including Art, Drama, PE, Music and Computer Coding, from subject experts and in purpose-built facilities.
• Girls thrive and develop problem-solving and risk-taking skills through our Outdoor Learning provision and family ethos.
• French and Mandarin are taught by native speakers form Nursery.
• SCPS girls are part of a wider community that inspires them with assemblies, trips and outstanding role models.

With a balance between hands-on, teacher-led activities and play-based discovery through our Outdoor Learning provision, our curriculum includes learning two modern foreign languages (French and Mandarin) whilst mastering oracy and literacy in English alongside computer coding. We build the foundations children need to read, write and speak well. Our expertise therefore helps develop strong reasoning, discussion and collaboration skills. Our girls learn to use and nurture their own voices with creative and critical thinking.

Every day, we instill the bedrock our pupils need to understand mathematical concepts and deduce patterns – through both tailored teacher-led activity and the opportunities we create for girls to exploring and discover numbers and maths problems and equations in the world around them.

Both Nursery and Reception time-tables are adapted and frequently updated but to get a sense of what a ‘week-in-the-life’ of a Streatham & Clapham Nursery or Reception girl might look like, please see the examples below (click on the images to enlarge them).