What is Cultural Capital in Early Years?

Cultural capital is all about providing children with experiences and opportunities to help them progress and achieve success. By creating a rich and varied EYFS curriculum that offers diverse, engaging activities, all children can be supported to achieve their potential. When children start in an early years setting, they already have a variety of different experiences. Cultural capital in EYFS is about celebrating and building on these early experiences and providing other new opportunities to be curious, explore, try new things and experience awe and wonder. The aim of cultural capital is to create possibilities for children's knowledge, understanding and abilities to be developed and extended through new opportunities and experiences. This gives children the best possible start to their education and promotes future success

How do we cover cultural capital?

We have a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give children the knowledge, self-belief and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.  The curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced. It builds on what children know and can do, towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning.

We aim to cover cultural capital through the variety of opportunities and experiences presented to the children in our setting.

 • Learning more about a topic the children are interested in using books or the internet.  Celebrating significant historical events.

• Creating a role-play activity based on a new experience, such as a visit to a shop or cafe.

• Exploring and describing new materials in a science experiment.

• Looking at seasonal changes or the weather.

• Exploring new musical instruments, music, songs and rhymes from different cultures.

• Being active outdoors, playing new games and using different types of equipment.

• Celebrating festivals and cultural events, such as Diwali, birthdays or sporting events.

• Organising a visit to local castles.

• Arranging a visit to our setting from a local organisation, Penrith Fire & Rescue Service, and Penrith Local Community support Officers.  Walking around our local area and visiting the building site.

• Sharing news and activities that they do with family and friends.

• Writing a letter together and going to the post office or postbox to send it.

• Reading a variety of stories, poems and non-fiction books and explore and use new vocabulary.

• Exploring a range of natural and manufactured materials to promote awe and wonder.

• Introducing, sharing and exploring different greetings and languages.

• Providing activities where children are invited to take turns and share resources and learn to cooperate, discuss, reason, solve problems and make decisions.

• Celebrating disability and diversity through sport.