Cambridge Early Years
What you need to know
This brochure has been designed to inform you about the Cambridge Early Years programme and our teaching and learning support.
Key programme features
Cambridge Early Years is a child-centred, playbased programme that helps young learners develop at their own pace.
The curriculum covers six areas:
• Communication, Language and Literacy
• Creative Expression
• Mathematics
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Understanding the World
We developed Cambridge Early Years in collaboration with trusted early years experts and practitioners all over the world. This has enabled us to create a programme that reflects the latest educational thinking and provides the support you need for high-quality learning at this important stage in your learners’ education.
How we support you
We offer a range of support for play-based learning on our School Support Hub and inside our teaching and learning resources.
On the School Support Hub and our website, you’ll find guidance on play-based learning, including why play is important, how to set up an effective learning environment, and your role in play. There is also further guidance on our website covering common misconceptions in this area.
Our teaching and learning resources include guided play ideas and provide step-by-step activity guidance for each session that undertakes a play-based approach. This is supported by downloadable activity sheets, song lyrics, stories, slideshows and flashcards to save you time and further engage your learners.
We offer both learner's books and teaching resources that cover the six subject areas in the curriculum.
Our teaching resources are organised into ‘blocks’ which represent five weeks of teaching (or a half term) and are included in the programme fee. Within each block, a week’s worth of activities is clearly labelled for Mathematics, Communication and Language – English as a First Language (FLE) and English as a Second Language (ESL) – and Let’s Explore.
The Let’s Explore strand supports learning statements from the Understanding the World, Physical Development, Creative Expression, and Personal Social and Emotional Development areas of the curriculum.
Our learner’s books are split into the following subjects: Communication & Language (ESL and FLE), Mathematics and Let’s Explore (apart from Year 1 where all subjects are covered in the same learner's books). Our learner's books are available at an additional cost.
We recommend using your existing phonics and handwriting schemes to support the literacy learning area of Cambridge Early Years.
Key programme features
There is a progression of learning statements for each curriculum area across the three stages: EY1 (ages 3 to 4), EY2 (ages 4 to 5) and EY3 (ages 5 to 6).
We recommend monitoring learners via observational
Cambridge Pathway and provides a firm foundation for
How we support you
Learning statements are a key part of the curriculum that you can find on the School Support Hub. The learning statements reflect milestones for children’s learning and development so you can monitor and consider their progress as part of your planning.
Our learner’s books and teaching resources are fully mapped to the curriculum learning statements and are filled with fun activity suggestions that support them.
Each activity in the teaching resources develops at least one learning statement from the curriculum, and our long-term plans (which are adaptable to suit the needs and interests of your learners) outline how the activity ideas support the statements. Our correlation grids also help you plan and give you an overview of where to find coverage.
We offer a variety of resources on our School Support Hub to help you assess and evaluate each child’s learning and plan next steps. This includes an overview of our early years assessment approach (Discover, Decide, Do), advice for recording progress digitally and case studies to provide inspiration.
Our teaching resources also provide ‘Listen and Observe’ guidance alongside detailed lesson plans, so you can integrate observational assessment effectively and see where your learners need more support and/or challenge.
We also recommend using Cambridge Early Years Check Together, our baseline assessment tool, at the start of EY2 to complement your observational assessment approach. Check Together gives you an objective measure of each child’s individual starting point of ability, which in turn helps you plan and make interactions with them more effective. This tool is available at an additional cost.
The Cambridge Early Years curriculum progresses smoothly into Cambridge Primary, either from EY2 to Primary Stage 1, or from EY3 to Primary Stage 2.
On the School Support Hub, we provide progression grids and guidance to help you support your learner's transition from a play-based approach in early years to more formal primary teaching.
The activities in our teaching resources and learner’s books help children develop skills that support their success in primary and beyond.
Cambridge Early Years
Give your learners the best start in life.
A holistic curriculum
Our curriculum follows a holistic approach that focuses on the whole child and connects their development with the world and people around them. It is built around the four key areas of early childhood development, including cognitive and physical development. It helps learners develop knowledge, understanding and skills through a spiral approach, by revisiting topics and skills in more depth at each stage.
Teaching and learning support
We provide the resources you need to implement Cambridge Early Years and offer your learners the best possible learning experience. Guidance is available on the School Support Hub and in our teaching resources (included in the programme fee) and learner's books (available at an additional cost). This means you can effectively implement the curriculum, plan engaging and creative activities, create a safe and inclusive learning environment, and much more. Look inside our resources Cambridge.org/education/early-years
We also offer professional development support to guide you on your Cambridge Early Years journey.
Check Together
Complete your early years offer with Cambridge Early Years Check Together. Check Together is a fun and engaging story-based assessment designed for children aged 4 to 5 years. It helps you see an objective picture of what your learners know and can do, and the progress they make during this crucial stage of development. The assessment covers early literacy, early numeracy, and personal, social and emotional development. Use it to complement your early years teaching for the best experience of Cambridge Early Years. Check Together is available at an additional cost.
Watch a demo at bit.ly/Check-Together
Discover more about becoming a Cambridge Early Years centre today.