As part of our curriculum, we want children to develop a strong foundation for learning. We do this
through play, exploration and everyday learning experiences. We want children to be able to go to
school with the skills to continue to learn including phonics.

Being ready for phonics helps and supports children with their engagement to learning. To help
children prepare from a young age we support and develop children’s vocabulary and listening
skills. This journey will start as soon as your child joins Bumbles, even as young as Baby Bees.
We start by teaching the children new words. Using songs and rhymes as well as repetition and
echoing for children to get used to hearing patterns in sounds and get used to sounds that they hear
and start to make some links between.

Staff ensure that interactions are meaningful and that vocabulary is expanded at any given
opportunity. We also encourage children to express their feeling and ideas this helps children to
become skilled communicators which are all an important part of being ready for phonics as children
will develop a broad variety of vocabulary meaning they are learning and hearing new sounds every
day.

We also go on trips around the local area for children to be able to recognise sounds in the wider
world and begin to differentiate between them.

We help children to start to recognise letters of the alphabet. This helps children be able to focus on
the main sound that is being made as part of the phonological awareness.