Where learning gets its shape
Lower Kindergarten is the year a child begins to sense that the day has a rhythm and that they are part of something bigger than their own game. Sitting together on a rug turns into listening to a whole story. Holding a pencil starts to feel natural. Questions become full sentences.
This is where letters and sounds arrive in earnest — through games, songs and handling, on the Pearson Early Years framework — alongside early number, drawn from the real business of counting, sorting and sharing out snacks fairly.
None of it comes at the cost of play. Wonder is still the engine; we have simply given it more to work with.
A Lower Kindergarten day
- 8.00 — Arrival and a settling task chosen from the shelf.
- 8.30 — Circle: the calendar, the weather, a song and a story.
- 9.00 — Letters, sounds and early number, through games and handling.
- 10.00 — Snack, then the garden.
- 10.45 — Making: art, music, or a project the class is on.
- 12.00 — Home, usually mid-story about their day.
The tools of a real learner.
Not facts to be tested, but the habits that make everything after this possible: attention, curiosity and the confidence to try.
Early literacy
Letter sounds, blending, name-writing and a daily story. The Pearson Early Years phonics, taught through play rather than drill.
Early number
Counting, sorting, patterns and quantity. Number met in the hands — with objects, snacks and games — long before it is written down.
Together
Group projects, classroom jobs and listening to one another. The year a class of individuals becomes, genuinely, a class.
Lower Kindergarten, honestly.
Not in the worksheet sense. What we ask for at home is a story read aloud each night, a little conversation about the day, and time to play. That is the homework, and it does more than any workbook could.
Occasionally a child will want to bring a drawing or a found object to share. We always make room for it.
Almost never at four. Reading arrives on a wide, normal timetable, and the strongest early readers are not always the strongest at ten. We watch each child closely and know the difference between a late bloomer and a child who needs a little extra help — and we act early when it is the latter.
What we will not do is make a four-year-old feel that they are behind. That does lasting harm; late reading does not.
It is an internationally recognised early-years curriculum that sets out what strong communication, literacy, numeracy and personal development look like at each age. It gives our teachers a clear map — and it means a child leaving Headway is well prepared for an international primary school anywhere.
In the room, it looks like play. The framework is the plan behind the play, not a set of tests laid over it.
Upper Kindergarten
The final year of early childhood, where it all comes together — early reading, real independence, and a child ready to walk into big school as their own person.
