Welcome to Early Years! We have 3 experienced teachers, Miss Pateman, Mrs Stagg, Mrs Humber and Mr Lester, 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 Nursery - September 2022 
• Starting out in Reception - September 2022 
• Our 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 to places where you can see or meet different animals - the park, pet shops, woodland, friends with interesting pets… What animals can you see? Do you know all of their names? What sort of things do they like to do? Can you find out what they eat or where they sleep? There are loads of questions to ask, and it’s fine to not know all the answers (understanding that you don’t know is definitely a Learning Superhero skill!)  
• 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.  
• Have a go at some of the fab art activities on the Tate Kids site: www.tate.org.uk/kids/make

Our latest news:

• We were really excited to have our parents and carers in for one last time to celebrate the end of EYFS with us. We shared a presentation that reminded us of all the exciting learning opportunities we have had this year. We then went outside to have breakfast with our families, before playing together and showing them all of our favourite areas. 
 

 
• We were excited to stay in our PE kits the whole week to take part in Sports Week, completing loads of activities, including trampolining, yoga and parachute games - as well as our fantastic Sports Day. We had practised so hard for many weeks and were so happy to see our families watching us. We all competed in four different races, including a running race, egg and spoon, dressing up and balancing race. We all cheered each other on during each race and were really proud of our stickers and certificates that we received at the end. 
 

 
• It’s been brilliant to see how much we have grown in confidence and independence this year, and we’ve put that into practice by getting outside and making the most of our final term! We have also taken part in lots of Transition activities in the summer term, as we prepare for our move up to our new classes in September.
 

 
• We decided to invite our daddy’s, uncles, brothers and cousins (all the important male carers in our lives) to celebrate Fathers Day. We invited them to spend a morning in the forest with us, completing different activities. We made dens, searched for mini beasts, made bird feeders and made our very own nature crowns. 

We have been learning about... 

Maths - This term we invited all our families to come and see how we learn during our Maths Stay and Play. We were able to share lots of the resources and activities we use to develop our maths skills in EYFS.

We have absolutely loved sharing our Tapestry journals this half term! It has helped develop our speaking, listening and communication skills. In class, many of us have been really excited to share what our parents have been putting online, and this has also helped our development. We also enjoy talking to our friends about what has been put online via the app and this has helped develop and strengthen friendships and connect us through common interests and experiences. 

This term's topics

Communication & Language - This term we will be spending lots of time discussing our learning and getting ready to move up to our new class in September. We will be encouraged to talk to our new teachers about our hobbies and interests, and to tell them as much as we can about what we have learnt and enjoyed doing this year. We will be listening to a range of animal stories as well as reading and acting out our core story, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, using puppets and story sacks - and this, in turn, will introduce us to lots of new vocabulary, using words like squelch, stumble, trip, squishy and squashy.

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - We will spend lots of time talking about our transition into Reception and Year 1 over the next half-term, so that we are ready for the changes when we move up. We will be meeting our new teachers, and getting to know our new classrooms and learning spaces, as well as talking about our emotions. 

Physical Development - In our PE sessions we will be developing our running and coordination, as well as learning the rules of some simple events, getting ready for our exciting Sports Day. In class, we will be tackling obstacle courses as we complete our bear hunts (going through the forest, over rivers and around muddy puddles). We will also continue to develop our fine motor skills through daily activities and challenges.

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