Welcome to Early Years! We have 3 experienced teachers, Miss Pateman, Mrs Hosten-White and Mrs Stagg, and are also supported by our fantastic team of teaching assistants. We have a huge learning space to explore and make the most of every day, spread across three classrooms and our outdoor area. We split into smaller groups with specific adults for parts of the day, and learn through a mixture of adult-led and child-led learning.       

• Starting out in Reception
• Nursery's latest curriculum map - more abour what we're learning  
• Reception's curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our Early Years Curriculum

Home learning ideas:

• We use Tapestry to share work that we have done in school and share ideas for learning beyond school. Speak to Miss Pateman if you're not sure about how to log in.
• Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read. 
• We have daily phonics sessions which follow the ReadWriteInc scheme. They have lots of guidance on how you can support your child with phonics at home here. 
• Go out in the evenings and look at the stars together - talk about the patterns you can see in them and see if you can spot the same stars on different nights. Help your child to begin to understand how incredibly far away these stars are and see what else you can see in the night sky, like the changing shape of the moon.
• We’ve been practicing our counting a lot in class, so building on this at home would be a huge help - you could count houses on the way to school, footsteps on the way to bed, shoes in the house, players on the team, objects in the shopping trolley, claps, nods... Anything and everything you can think of!
• Support your child in building their imagination and storytelling, building things using big cardboard boxes and pieces of fabric, or dressing up and pretending to be nurse, doctors or parents. 
• Visit the library and see what books you can find that your child recognises already. Are there any they can retell? It’s quick and easy to sign-up, and you can access a huge number of free ebooks and audiobooks: www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives 
• Have a go at some of the fab art activities on the Tate Kids site: www.tate.org.uk/kids/make

Our latest news:

• During the run up to Christmas, we have been involved in lots of exciting activities, including our own Stay and Make event on the 13th December. We completed a range of different art and craft activities, decorating snowmen and stars, making cards and hats and designing our own Christmas trees. We were delighted to see so many families join in with the activities and enjoying the song which we performed together.
 

 
• This half-term we have been learning about Christianity and the story of the first Christmas. We thought it would be a fantastic idea to visit one of our local churches to find out what they are like. We visited St Joseph’s and met the priest, who showed us around the church and talked to us about what happens there.
 

 
• This half term we have focused on two brilliant stories - The Gingerbread Man and The Jolly Postman. We learnt how to retell the stories using actions and key words and then innovated on them by changing characters. To support our learning, we made (and ate) our own gingerbread men, and were visited by a postman, who told us all about the way our letters are delivered.
 

 
• On our visit to Hertfordshire Zoo, we saw a range of different animals and learnt about what they need to survive in the wild. We particularly enjoyed seeing the zoo keepers feeding the penguins. After lunch, we ventured through the dinosaur park and had lots of fun watching the dinosaur robots move. 
 

 
• During Science Week, we carried out lots of experiments, including exploring, creating rainbows using water and felt pens and taking part in the school’s Egg Drop challenge. We had great fun working with our partners and creating a safe hold for the egg. We continued the experiment in our garden and cheered as the eggs landed safely. 
 

We have been learning about... 

This half term we have celebrated many festivals and celebrations, such as: Remembrance day, Diwali, Bonfire night and Christmas. Some of us have had first-hand experiences of Diwali, and we were very excited to hear how our classmates celebrate with their families.

We learnt all about the artist Yayoi Kusama. We created our own dotty art work using cotton buds, our fingers and dabbers, which tied in neatly with Children in Need as we wore dotty clothes. 

Maths In our maths lessons, we have learnt to represent numerals using manipulatives such as Numicon, tens frames and natural objects. We have also been using Numicon to create number bonds to 10. 

This term's topics

Communication & Language - We will continue to develop our vocabulary through our words and signs of the week, all linking in with the two stories we are focussing on this half-term: Each Peach Pear Plum by Alan Ahlberg and Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman. We will listen to a range of different music and think about what it would sound like to be onboard a rocket or floating around in space. We will also take part in lots of hot-seating activities so we can develop our understanding of how to ask (and answer) questions, as well as working out how characters feel at key points in each story.

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - We will be meeting our next learning superhero, Claudia Curiosity, whose powers are questioning, exploring and risk taking. We will learn to complete challenges with independence and use perseverance to keep trying even when things seem difficult - and then celebrate our accomplishments when we succeed.

Physical Development - In our PE sessions with Mr Butler we will continue to develop our coordination and spatial awareness. In particular, we will be focussing on our throwing and catching skills, using balls of different sizes. Back in class, we will continue to develop our fine motor skills, forming letters with the correct size and orientation and taking part in regular Marvellous Mark Making sessions to help us to secure this key skill.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.