Welcome to Early Years! We have 5 expert teachers, Miss Pateman, Mrs Stagg, Miss Griffin, Miss Graby and Miss Smith, 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

Home learning ideas:

• We use Tapestry to share work that we have done in school and share ideas for learning beyond school. Speak to one of our teachers 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. 
• Talk about things you’ll be celebrating this term in your family, the traditions you have and the reasons these are important to you.
• 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:

• Reception had a fantastic day out at Audley End, We travelled through the woods on the miniature train, enjoying the beautiful surroundings and spotting fairy houses on our journey. After that, we set off on foot to explore the forest. We loved the fairy walk, with magical houses, clearings, water features and tunnels around every corner. There were lots of opportunities to practice our writing and letter formation as well, labelling some of the things we found and writing messages to leave for the fairies!  
 

 
• We rounded-off the term with our end-of-year celebration, when our parents and carers joined us in class. We shared a presentation that reminded us of all the exciting things we have done this year, before making cakes together and showing them all of our favourite areas. 
 

 
• Nursery had a brilliant day out at Ardley Church Farm. We met the lambs, goats and guinea pigs, explored the fairy trail and played in the woodland. We all had a lovely day out and learnt loads about the lives of different animals.
 

 
• We loved getting involved in Sports Week, taking part in Sports Days and being introduced to lots of new games and activities.  
 

We have been learning about... 

In maths we’ve been learning to order numbers, starting with 1-5 and then progressing to 10 and beyond. We have made number lines to help us to count forwards and back, and have been introduced to part- part-whole models.

We all develop our phonics in small groups every day, learning initial sounds, practising writing letters, and blending and segmenting the sounds we know to read and build words. 

During Science Week we explored floating and sinking, met some amazing animals in our Teaching Talons session and made our own ’egg drop’ contraptions - and we really enjoyed watching these being dropped off the roof with real eggs inside!

This term's topics

Communication & Language - Leading up to our trip to the theatre on 12th November we will be talking about what to expect and what we’re excited about - and then after we have been we will be describing the show in detail and recounting our day out. Throughout the half-term we will be doing lots of work around rhyme, spotting words that rhyme, singing rhyming songs and reading stories that are written in verse. We will also continue to learn our Makaton Sign of the Week. Finally, later in the term we will be writing and posting letters to Santa and talking about all the things we enjoy about Christmas!

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - We will be discussing what it means to be kind and generous to others, thinking about the reasons why we support good causes and give presents at Christmas. We will also talk about the way that we feel when other people are kind to us, linked to this term’s Learning Superhero, Eddy Empathy.

Physical Development - In our PE sessions with Mr Butler, we will continue to develop our spatial awareness, finding space, moving towards and away from each other, and travelling and stopping with control. In class, we will have lots of opportunities to develop our mark making skills, working out if we prefer holding writing tools in our right or left hand. We will also develop our fine motor skills through cutting, chopping and painting.

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