When your child starts school, they will be learning alongside other children.  Work and play activities will be planned to help them reach certain points in their learning, called ‘early learning goals’, by the end of the Reception year.

This section aims to explain what the early learning goals are, how they fit in with what your child will be doing at school and how you can help support your child.

Schools work hard at creating the best conditions for children to develop. one of the most important things for teachers to do is to know what your child is learning, how confident they are and what they need to do next to keep learning.  Early learning goals help to give teachers guidance in your child’s first year at school.

What are early learning goals?
Early learning goals are the things that it is expected most children should be able to do by the end of their year in the Reception class.  However, some children will do more than is expected of them, while others will still be developing towards them.  This is because a few months’ difference in age at this very early stage of learning can make a huge difference to a child. As the child gets older this gap no longer affects their learning in the same way.

There are early learning goals in each of the following areas

• Personal, social and emotional development

•  Language and literacy

• Mathematical development

• Knowledge and understanding of the world

• Physical development

• Creative development

Your child does not take a test to see if they reached the goals.  The goals simply fit in with everything else your child is doing at school during the course of his first year.  Young children usually learn best through play –based activities.  Your child’s teacher will be taking notice of how well your child is learning throughout the year in a wide range of these activities and will know whether your child has reached the goals.

Personal, social and emotional goals

Some of the goals to do with your child’s development as an individual are

• Being able to work in a group, taking turns and sharing

• Dressing and undressing himself

• Being confident to try new activities

• Being happy to talk aloud

How you can help
You are the first person to teach your child.  To help in this area you could do things such as encourage them to share food and toys and to talk about what they have done and how they feel about their experiences.

Language and literacy goals

Some of the early learning goals in this area are

• listening and responding to stories, songs and poems

• hearing and saying the first and last sound in a word

• talking about things clearly and in the right order

• holding a pencil correctly and writing his name

• reading common words such as ‘I’, ‘am’ or ‘a’.

How you can help

Everything you do with your child will help their language
develop.  By talking, listening and asking questions they will become more confident.  Gradually increase the length of the stories you share together, point out simple words when you see them in books and encourage them to experiment with writing, trying out their ideas.#

Mathematical goals

Some of these early learning goals are

• count 10 objects

• recognise numbers 1 to 9

• use mathematical language, for example, ‘more/less’

• ‘heavy/light’

• make and continue simple patterns talk about and recognise shapes

• add and take away numbers                

How you can help

The opportunities to develop your child’s maths are all around us!  You can help by talking about maths, for example ‘You had six grapes but you’ve eaten one – how many have you got left?’, making patterns, counting objects in your shopping trolley and pointing at house numbers.

Knowledge and understanding of the world goals

These include:

• Finding similarities and differences

• Asking questions about the world

• Being able to use the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and

• Hearing and talking about them

• Saying what he likes and dislikes about places

• Building models

• Finding out about where he lives

How you can help

Go for a walk and talk about what you see.  Play with things such as ice and bubbles and talk about what happens to them.  Take every opportunity to talk about your child’s thoughts and ideas.

Physical goals

Your child will need to become confident using apparatus and equipment. Some of the goals are:

• Moving safely with confidence and co-ordination

• Knowing what happens to his body when he exercises

• Travelling around, over, under and through apparatus

• Handling tools such as scissors, rolling pins and stencils safely

Your child’s confidence in this area is an important part of their development.  You can help by. for example, rolling, squashing and making things together, using small equipment such as balls and skipping ropes and encouraging them to cut up their own food.

Creative goals

These goals are in areas such as art, music, dance and imaginative play.  Examples are

• Exploring the colour, shape and feel of things

• Being able to sing songs and notice how sound changes

• Being able to communicate how your child feels about a song or a story

• Using your child’s imagination to draw, dance and tell stories.

How you can help

Encouraging your child to be creative will help them to use the skills that they are learning in the other areas in different situations.  Examples of the things you can do are singing songs together, encouraging them to act out their favourite stories and giving your child the time and opportunity to sing and dance to their favourite music.

To sum up

Everything that you do with your child can be used as a real learning opportunity.  Make the time you spend together as fun and exciting as  possible.  If they enjoy themselves then they will want to carry on learning!