Reception

The Rainbow Fish is a heartwarming story about a beautiful fish with shiny, sparkling scales who learns that sharing with others brings true happiness and friendship. Through this colourful and engaging tale, our children will explore important values such as kindness, generosity, friendship, and inclusion. Children will take part in creative writing activities, storytelling, art, and group discussions that help build confidence, empathy, and social skills while encouraging them to think about how their actions affect others

In Maths, we will be continuing to explore number bonds to 5 and some to 10. We will be learning about odd and even numbers, comparing and ordering numbers to 20. Deepen spatial reasoning skills and we will also be matching, rotating and manipulating shapes.

In Topic sessions 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 finding out all about the artist ‘George Seurat’. We will be learning about hot and cold countries and different animals.

This half term we will be exploring the exciting world of minibeasts! Through our class story we will be learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly. We will discuss the different character’s feelings and make our own predictions. We will retell the story to others with accompanying actions. We will be exploring story vocabulary through hatching our very own butterflies!

In Maths, we will continue to explore the composition of numbers and learn about doubling and halving. We will use manipulatives to support our recording skills. We will embed our “subitising” skills by recognising number arrangements and playing games.

Through our topic work we will be designing and making our own bug hotel from recycled materials. We will be discussing ways to make our school sensory garden more “bug friendly”. We will be recording our caterpillar’s growth through photographs, videos and diaries. We will go on an exciting ‘bug hunt’ and capture our observations through experimenting with oil pastels and various techniques to draw the different minibeasts. We will look at pattern and explore colour through making our own blob-and –fold butterflies. We have an exciting visit from Rent-a-Beast planned where children will get to handle and learn more about lots of creatures.

In PE this half term our focus is on Dance and movement to music. We will be using our bodies in different ways to express ourselves and link these movements with our class story (such as; crawling, stretching, flapping, wriggling and curling up).

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 and exploring floating and sinking! 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.