Reception

This half term, we will be really busy learning all about different types of holidays. We will explore hot and cold holiday destinations as well as going on a visit to the seaside! We will look back in time to discover what seaside holidays were like in the past.

In Literacy, we will continue to practise our wicked words so that we are super confident as we move into year 1! Whizzy the Wizard will also be back for one last appearance, introducing new, magical golden words from our class story ‘Handa’s Surprise’. We will be busy writing descriptions of the yummy fruit from the story, using amazing adjectives and we will also be writing our own travel brochures and postcards.

In Maths, we will be revisiting number bonds to 5 and 10. We will be exploring odd and even numbers and will also have our own ice cream parlour in which we will be using pictorial charts to compare and answer mathematical problems!

We can’t wait to get crafty this half term! We will be using our fine motor skills to weave baskets, collage, print and paint! We will also be mixing colours in order to experiment with warm and cool colours and learning all about the famous artist George Seurat.

This half term our new topic is ‘Emergency'. The children will be learning all about different occupations and in particular the people who help us in our community. To really get the children ‘hooked’ and excited we will develop brand new role play areas such as a hospital, fire station, vets and a police station and get ready for some exciting visits to school from ‘people who help us’. We will also be putting our ‘detective hats’ on to figure out what has happened to poor Humpty Dumpty! Who can help?? Luckily we will have doctors and nurses in training to help! Humpty Dumpty will be our rhyme focus this half term and we will be creating our rhyme map to help to re-tell it with accompanying actions.

In Read, Write, Inc this half term, we will be learning more of the set 1 sounds. We will be practising our oral blending daily and beginning to introduce ‘Fred talk’ to help support the children in writing initial sounds of words and simple cvc words using taught sounds. We continuously revisit previously learnt sounds to ensure that these are deeply embedded and that children are able to recall and use taught rhymes to aid with their letter formation.

In Literacy, a strong focus in the Nursery will be on name writing. We will be practising this daily and encourage children to practise at home in a variety of engaging ways such as in bubbly water at bath time, using chalks on the floor or even using loose parts /natural objects such as pebbles whilst out on a walk! We will continue to work our way through the “Squiggle whilst you wiggle “ programme and begin the next set of gross and fine motor movements.

We will continue to develop the children’s knowledge of number, number recognition and formation in daily Maths sessions and through fun purposeful activities such as; helping to use the correct number of blocks to re-build the wall for Humpty Dumpty! We will be continuing to develop skills in subitising numbers to 5 and begin to look at how numbers can be combined. We will be making comparisons in relation to capacity and develop our problem solving skills to help Fireman Sam work out which bucket will hold the most water

We will develop our understanding of job roles and empathy and emotions through our ‘Emergency!’ focus and circle time activities. We will be focusing on games and competitive sport in our PE lessons to help prepare the children for their sports day races.

This half term, we will be setting off on an amazing pirate adventure! We will enjoy the story of ‘The Night Pirates’ and explore lots of new vocabulary that we can then use in our play to act out and pretend to be pirates in our very own pirate ship!

‘Ahoy there me hearties!’ – Children will continue to practise their ‘wicked words’ using our daily rap and become super speedy readers by recognising lots of words by sight. We will also be embedding our phonics skills and recognising special friends (such as ‘ch – chip’) within words and beginning to read simple sentences.

In Maths, we will be practising our counting, number bonds and problem solving skills to help the pirates with their treasure keeping. We will be recapping on what we can remember about 2D shapes and 3D shapes and how shapes can be manipulated. We will also develop our spatial awareness skills.

In our topic sessions we will be making our own maps and telescopes to go off on our pirate adventure! Children will join in with Easter celebrations where will be sharing the Easter story and discovering why we celebrate Easter.

This half term, we will be ‘steering’ our way around the topic of ‘Journeys’. We will enjoy the story of ‘The Train Ride’ and engage our amazing imaginations in acting out the story and make our own predictions…. What will we see at the end of the tunnel?

Children will have fun interactive phonics sessions with ‘Fred the Frog’ and will also continue our daily ‘Wicked Word Rap’ to help with sight recognition of wicked words. Children will practise their blending and segmenting skills when writing out their own tickets for a special journey of their own.

In Maths, there will be lots of opportunities to develop our problem solving skills and embed our knowledge of number and number bonds. Linking to our topic, we will be introducing time and supporting children to become familiar with routines and experience real life opportunities related to time… we don’t want to be late and miss the bus! We will also be exploring capacity and comparing objects in relation to capacity.

Children will be getting creative in Art and Design when designing and building their own vehicles. Children will be sorting various transport into land, sea and air and comparing and contrasting features of different modes of transport. We will be ‘out and about’ using maps to find our way to the bus stop for a bus ride around our local area. We also have the special Chinese New Year celebrations to get involved in… we can’t wait to make our own lanterns and join in with a Chinese dragon dance!

This half term, we will be taking a stroll through the deep dark wood with a crafty little mouse who is pretending to be on the way to meet a Gruffalo! This fearsome beast has awesome features - terrible tusks and teeth, orange eyes, purple prickles, warts and knobbly knees - and its favourite food is, roasted fox, owl ice cream or scrambled snake….delicious right? On this journey, we will not only learn lots of new vocabulary in Literacy that will be introduced by our class wizard Whizzy, but we will also use our spectacular talk for writing skills which will help us to recite the story.

Children will have fun interactive phonics sessions with Fred the frog and they will also learn ‘wicked words’ to help with sight recognition for those really tricky words! We will continue to build on our fine motor skills through daily ‘Squiggle’ sessions and dough disco.

In Maths, Children will practise counting and number recognition through daily challenges. We will start to look at the part-part whole model to compare and combine quantities and apply new skills through solving simple and practical addition number sentences.

In Topic, children will be categorising animal habitats to establish where they live and why they live there. We will be taking a closer look at a variety of animal footprints to figure out who they belong to. We will even have a go at designing and building our very own animal habitats. We can’t wait to get creative in art when we explore colour, texture and materials. We also have lots of exciting celebrations to explore and we can’t wait to get into character on stage and put on a fabulous Christmas performance!

This half term’s topic is based around the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Children will be beginning to describe the characters and events that take place. They will retell the story to others using key story language and accompanying actions. Children will be developing their pencil grip and control through fun, interactive activities. Daily phonics sessions will support early reading and spelling skills. We will be supporting and encouraging a love of reading through sharing books daily and with regular visits to our library boat. Children will be introduced to new topic vocabulary every day with the help of our “Class Wizard” and supported to orally rehearse sentences. They will be given lots of opportunity through both play and adult directed learning to develop and apply their new skills.

Children will practise counting and number recognition through daily challenges such as helping the magic bean seller to count out beans, and counting coins to pay for flowers in the flower shop role play area. We will begin to recognise patterns and continue them. We will also compare the height of objects…including measuring and comparing the beanstalks that we will grow in school. Children will identify which group of objects has more/less or the same.

Children will learn about the changing seasons and the lifecycle of a bean. They will grow their own beanstalk and discover what their plant needs to stay healthy. They will record the progress with drawings, labels and simple sentences. Furthermore, to enhance this experience for our children, we will visit Heath House Farm Garden Centre. Here, the children will have the opportunity to become gardeners and pot their own plants, explore the garden centre and use a variety of questions so they can discover even more!

In our PE lessons, children will be working on their spatial awareness skills, agility and movement through our weekly ‘BeeActive’ sessions. Children will move in a variety of ways, changing direction and develop their gross motor co-ordination.