Woodland Base Summer Term 2014 2014 April 2014 Dear Parents, Welcome back to the Summer Term our last term in Reception – the time is certainly flying by!! The children have returned to school fit and healthy and ready to continue their learning journey in Reception with their usual excitement and enthusiasm. Our work this term will be based around the theme of Growing, Insects and Bugs and Castles. We have talked about this and the children have come up with some interesting questions for us to try and answer.... you will be able to see these in our classroom. This learning will also include lots of planting and growing as well as investigating a variety of different insects so we are hoping for good weather so that we actually find some! We have decided to change our role play area into a castle. We have been working hard in our outdoor area and have already planted peas, beans and sunflowers and we will be planting more seeds this week ready to put into the planters outside our classroom. We want to make our garden more attractive to bees and butterflies. Of course we await (hopefully) our eggs hatching and possibly some little frogs – so we will have plenty to look at and discuss this term. We can also use the Mud Kitchen outside again now and this is a hugely popular area . If you have any old saucepans or baking tins for this area that we could use please pop them into school – thank you. This term we will also be beginning our transition work -welcoming our preschool children to school and looking ahead to Year One. The children are much better now at organising themselves in the morning with their trainers, bookbags and lunchboxes. Once they have organised everything they can settle into the classroom ready for learning and your encouragement in helping them do this independently is invaluable as it is an important part of transition throughout the school. As always thank you for your continued support with your children’s learning, please come and see me if you need to discuss anything further. Thank you for your support with Milly, Billy and Bobby and as these are very popular with the children. They will come to visit for one final time this term!!.
Personal, Social & Emotional Our work this term is based on the SEAL themes of Relationships and Changes. This work will revisit our earlier work on different feelings and then on recognising fair and unfair situations and developing strategies to deal with them. The children will be reflecting on their year in Reception and how they have changed and developed this year, and what they are looking forward to in Year 1.The children will also be involved in welcoming our preschool children to reception and talking about how they felt when they started school and different ways to make our new children feel welcome.
Physical Development We will continue with our daily active time sessions which the children are really enjoying and it is a further opportunity to consolidate all our movement skills. This term we will be developing our athletic skills ready for sports day, playing simple team games using bats and balls and consolidating basic ball skills. We will also continue to develop our fine motor skills. As part of our work on growing we will also revisit healthy eating and lifestyles. We are also having a weekly P.E lesson led by Mr Phipps.
Communication & Language We will be continuing to develop attention and concentration during activities as appropriate. We will be learning new vocabulary and developing language during role play activities and small world play. The children will continue to share special things from
home explaining what they have brought with them, why they like it, where they got it from. They will have the opportunity to ask each other questions about their special objects too.
Mathematics We continue with our counting, consolidating counting and ordering numbers to 10 ,20 and if appropriate beyond 20. We will continue to practise counting in 10s to and back from 100 as well as learning to count in 2s and 5s. We are beginning to write numbers now and record simple calculations. We will also be sorting objects into groups of equal numbers and counting them accurately. We will be revisiting 2d and 3d shapes and using more specific mathematical language to describe them. We will also be looking at patterns and symmetry. The children will have opportunities to use their developing mathematical ideas to solve simple problems. We will also be consolidating our work on measures, comparing items in terms of their weight, height, length and capacity and using everyday language to talk about size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money.
Literacy This term we will be consolidating our reading and writing skills. The children are becoming very enthusiastic and confident writers now so please continue to support them by encouraging their writing at home. Our story making story will be Jack and the Beanstalk. We will be focussing on the story language and using the language patterns of stories to retell and act out stories. You could support this work by encouraging your child to tell you the stories we have learnt so far and teaching you some of the story making actions too. We will be thinking about ways to change our story, inventing our own stories recording them orally and in written form. There will of course continue to be a daily focus on phonics, developing segmenting and blending skills and consolidating sounds. The children are continuing to learn tricky words and when your child is able to read each set confidently they can learn to spell them accurately too as this is really useful for their independent writing. Your help with this work and with your child’s reading is invaluable - thank you. Please continue to read regularly at home with your child as it really makes a huge difference to their progress. We will use all the sounds and the key words we now know to write and read simple sentences during shared and guided reading sessions as well as our story making. We will be writing instructions for our gardening work, labels for our models, pictures and things brought in from home. Alongside the letter sounds we are also continuing to learn the alphabet so the children know the name of the letters.
Understanding the World We will be continuing to use the computers - the children are used to working on our laptops now. We will be talking about flowers and plants as well as looking for minibeasts in our outdoor area and thinking about ways we can attract wildlife to our garden. We will be looking at minibeast lifecycles . The children will be using a variety of materials to construct models and thinking about ways to adapt their work.
Expressive Arts and Design We will continue to use the musical instruments exploring simple rhythms and playing loudly and softly. The children will begin to use what they have learnt about materials and media in developing their own ideas for pictures, models, and play activities. They will continue to use different tools and techniques in their creations. As well as developing painting skills- using different tools for painting and exploring adding texture to paint , we will be using different drawing media and looking at the work of other artists. Please come to see me if you need any other information. Please keep looking at our blog for useful websites and information about our learning. Thank you for your continued support – please see me if you need to discuss anything further with me. Kind Regards Sue Flavell