Blanchelande College Our Infant school

Welcome to Blanchelande Infants

Our close team of Early Years specialists have carefully tailored the curriculum to give each child a warm, happy, nurturing environment. We want each child to develop a love of learning, so lessons are engaging, stimulating and creative, enabling the children to grow in confidence and progress in their educational journey.

Our classes are smaller, and with both a teacher and Learning Support Assistant we are able to meet the needs of each individual child. We focus on finding each child’s individual strengths while offering flexible learning for extra challenge or support, as needed.

We offer a broad and balanced curriculum, based on the Early Years Foundation Stage and English National Curriculum, with core subjects taught daily. That means that, as well as Literacy (English) and Mathematics, our Infants also have lessons in RE, Science, Geography, History, Music, Computing, Art & Design, French and PSHE. Physical Education – which includes sport, dance and swimming – form an integral part of the school week and children are taught by specialist sports teachers.

I’m delighted to welcome you to Blanchelande’s Infant department, where each Infant child experiences school as a series of adventures!

Alexa Yeoman (Head of Infants)

Our phonics programme is taught daily in every Infant classroom to ensure the building blocks of reading are systematically taught, with small group work providing differentiation. We prioritise listening to each child reading aloud to an adult regularly throughout the week. Children have ready access to a wide variety of reading books to take home and change daily, based on their interest.

At Blanchelande, our Infants are surrounded by nature and enjoy their own dedicated outdoor learning area within our vast estate. This area is fully stocked with exciting resources such as construction materials for science and mathematics activities. Every child in the department has a set of wellies and waterproofs enabling them to fully embrace these unique learning opportunities. Welly Wednesday is a highlight of the Infant week, with activities including cooking on the firepit, building dens, working as teams in the mud kitchen or in the forest area, or planting plants, flowers and vegetables at the Blanchelande Eco Hut. There is always plenty of opportunity for the children to simply follow where their imaginations lead them (searching for dragons is particular popular)!

During lunchtimes, Blanchelande Infants enjoy many opportunities for co-curricular enrichment. Just a few of these include:

Instrumental music lessons
Tennis
Football
Sewing
Recorder club
Construction
Book club
Infant Choir

Our infants delight in additional activities throughout the year such as trips, concerts, drama and musical performances, class assemblies, author visits and workshops. In June each year we have an activity week to introduce the children to new skills and experiences, such as golf, surfing, horse-riding, sailing, sea swimming, candle making, cooking, indoor climbing, team building and problem solving.

Blanchelande loves to celebrate the children’s successes, whether through the Infant Hero Quest, the Hero of the Week badge, collecting dojos or the termly Cusack Cup (for kindness, courtesy and caring). The academic year ends with a formal Prize Giving.

Infant Day Timings

From 7.45 am	Breakfast Club (optional)
8.45 am – 9.00 am	Drop Off
9.00 am	Lessons begin
12.15 pm	Lunch (packed or cooked)
12.50 pm	Clubs
1.25 pm	Afternoon lessons
3.15 pm	Day ends
3.15 pm – 5.30 pm	After School Club (optional)

For Breakfast Club and After-School Club prices, please visit our fees page

Curriculum Maps

You can download our curriculum maps for each year group (Reception – Year 2) below.

Reception Curriculum Map

Year 1 Curriculum Map

Year 2 Curriculum Map

Reading lists

Reception Reading Lists

Year 1 Reading Lists

Year 2 Reading Lists

Parent Handbook

Infant Parent Handbook

Communication with parents

All infant children are greeted daily at the door by an Infant staff member and each class teacher is available at the end of every day to chat with parents. Infant teachers regularly post on the Class dojo class story photographs, messages and short written descriptions of activities to help parents stay fully informed. We send a school report home at Christmas and the end of the academic year. Parents meetings take place in both Michaelmas and Hilary terms.

For more information, please contact Mrs Yeoman.

Email yeomana@blanchelande.sch.gg