Welcome to Early Years! We have 3 experienced teachers, Mrs Hosten-White, Mrs Stagg and Mrs Humber, 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  
• Starting out in Reception
• 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. 
• Hunt for minibeasts in your local area - there will be hundreds in the garden, especially in bushes, under rocks, between paving stones and beneath plant pots. Which creatures can you name? How many legs do they have? What do they seem to be eating? Why do you think they live in these places? 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:

• 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. 
 

 
• At our latest Stay and Play we enjoyed sharing our learning with our grown-ups. We also completed a range of activities, including hunting for Easter Eggs, making perfume and using objects from nature to create crafts. 
 

 
• Throughout the term we have been learning about keeping ourselves safe and people who help us in our community. We have had lots of visitors over the last few weeks, including the police, the lollypop person and a team of firefighters. It was very exciting to meet them and to see inside their police cars and fire engines! 
 

 
• 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... 

During the run up to Easter, we have been talking about Spring and learning to be inquisitive investigators! We have learnt about what happens all around us in our environment, testing out different materials, looking carefully at nature and making lots of arts and crafts linked to the arrival of Spring.  

We have also learnt about lots of different festivals, including Chinese New Year and Holi. We have talked about the different days and events that we each celebrate in our families, and have learnt about the meaning of these festivals.

This term's topics

Communication & Language - This term we will continue to expand our vocabulary, learning the names of the creatures we discover and collecting language to describe them. We will start to think about differences between words with similar meaning - for example, deciding if a creature is small, tiny or microscopic, or if its body is yellow, orange or fiery. Nursery will also be playing lots of listening games involving rhyme and alliteration, supporting our growing phonics knowledge, while Reception will be working on expanding our conversation so that we can discuss ideas and explain how we feel in different situations.

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - We will spend lots of time talking and thinking about the things that make us special, recognising that we are all unique, amazing individuals! We will talk about the way we show we care about others. Throughout the term we will be developing our independence and making sure we can all confidently ask for help.

Physical Development - In our weekly sessions with Mr Butler we will continue to work on spatial awareness and ball skills, learning to travel with control and throw and catch balls of different sizes. We will then use these skills to begin to play simple games, involving attack and defence. As it gets a bit warmer, we will also be trying to get outside a bit more, exploring athletics, developing our running and playing lots of parachute games.

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