We believe in providing high-quality, investigative learning opportunities for children to inspire and ignite their curiosity.  We make full use of our outdoor areas, the school grounds and local area to offer the children rich and meaningful experiences that promote a fascination about their environment and the world.  Children learn about their own environment and the people who live there.  They explore features, similarities and differences and talk about the things that they notice, as well as their likes and dislikes.

In the Foundation Stage children learn about their school community and explore their immediate environment.  They learn about things that are found indoors and outdoors and begin to talk about things they have observed, with the support of an adult.  Through the sharing of stories from around the world they begin to be aware of different people and the countries where they live.

In Reception, children use the local area to explore both the built (man-made) and natural environment.  They use play maps and small world equipment to make their own environments.  Whilst simple map-making, painting, drawing and creating models of known and imaginary places help them to develop their early geographical skills.

In Key Stage 1 the children’s learning is covered by the four strands of the National Curriculum.  These are: Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography and Geographical Skills and Fieldwork.  The children learn the basic geographical vocabulary used to describe features of the places they are learning about.  They learn to use the terms “human” and “physical” features in relation to their local environment and apply them to the things that they see to enhance their locational awareness.

Aerial photographs, maps, atlases, plans and Google Earth help the children to view their own locality, the wider community, country and the world and enable them to create their own maps and construct a simple key to identify landmarks and basic human and physical features.

Exploring our school environment and its grounds, extending onto our neighbourhood to identify types of homes and develop directional and locational language enables children to gain first-hand experience.  As they move through school, their geographical awareness extends into our local town enabling children to develop simple fieldwork and observational skills.  This provides them with a solid foundation on which they are then able to apply these skills to the wider world.