Welcome back from the Early Years team. This is the third of our newsletters. It will hopefully explain the topics and some of the activities the children will be doing this term. We hope this information will enable you to support your child in a variety of ways, including discussion and lots of practical, fun activities.

The Foundation Stage

The Foundation Stage Curriculum continues throughout your child’s time in the Reception Year and will form the basis of the topics for this term. On a typical day the children will participate in activities involving all six areas of learning, which are:

• Mathematical Development
• Communication, Language and Literacy
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Creative Development
• Knowledge and Understanding of the World

 We aim to do this by providing lots of opportunities for learning through play, which is a key principle of Early Years practice.

Whatever the weather, come rain or shine, the children will have opportunities on a daily basis for outside play so please ensure they come to school with the appropriate clothing – we don’t want any children missing out on the fun!

Topics for the term

Our topics for the first half term are Dinosaurs and Noah’s Ark. Each week we will focus on a different story covering a variety of topics linked to Dinosaurs and animals, this will run as follows:

Week 1   Noah’s Ark

Week 2   Noah’s Ark /Two by Two 

Week 3   Noah’s Ark animals

Week 4   Dinosaur Roar / Explore Dinosaurs (Non Fiction)

Week 5   Harry and the bucketful of dinosaurs

Our topics will allow us to explore the following:

The first part of the half term will be spent finding out about animals. We will be sorting and classifying animals, making animal prints, reading lots of stories about animals, going on an animal hunt and thinking about where animals live.  This will all be based around the story of Noah’s Ark.   The second part of this half term will be learning about Dinosaurs.  This will involve looking at Non Fiction books to find lots of information, exploring the past with an archaeological dig, writing a dinosaur fact file, moving like dinosaurs and creating dinosaur’s foot prints.

  After half term our topic will be Treasure Island and Pirates.

We will be looking at all aspects of sea life, including underwater life,

visiting the seaside, sea transport and swash buckling with pirates.

This will lead to lots of play with sand and water  and exploration outside. We will look at a variety of stories on this theme.

The children will continue to have a weekly French lesson, based around speaking skills, games and fun activities.

At the beginning of each week we will put in the Year R notice board (in Year R playground) an overview of that weeks activities.  Hopefully this will allow you to continue the learning at home and help you to talk to the children about what they have done at school.

                                

                                 Useful Information

PE

Both Maple and Silver Birch class have P.E on Thursday- so please make sure P.E kits are in school and all clothes (P.E kit and uniform) are named.  

As we will be doing the majority of our PE lessons outside during the summer term all children will also need a pair of named trainers or plimsolls (they will not need both) Trainers are preferable as they provide more support when using apparatus.  Please note, if they don’t have any trainers or plimsolls they will not be able to take part.

Food / drink

Please remember that your child needs to have their water bottle in school daily and IT SHOULD ONLY CONTAIN WATER.  New bottles are available from the office for £1.00 and lids are available to buy separately at 30p each.

There is no need to bring a snack as all the children are provided with a free piece of fruit.

Free milk is available until your child’s fifth birthday.

Reading

Your child will need to bring their book bag to school every day. From now on they will be reading to us once a week and their books will be changed at some point during the rest of the week. We encourage the children to read a variety of books at home and to make use of the local library. The children are still able to borrow a school library book, which they should return to school to change for another one. (Year R’s library day is Wednesday)

Spellings

We will be giving spellings to those children who we feel are ready for them. The children will have some Year R keywords to learn. They will come home to you in a spelling book and will have a week to practise them. We use the LOOK, COVER, WRITE, CHECK method. More information about this will be in the spelling book.

Don’t forget if there is anything you would like to ask us, feel free to come in and speak to any member of the YR team, alternatively jot down any messages in the red Home School book.

Yours sincerely,

Early Years Team

Laura Matier   Elizabeth Whiteley              Helena Crawford     

Jayne Christopher      Hazel Taylor