Year R Autumn curriculum letter 12

Gingerbread Man Base Autumn Term 2012 2012 September 2012 Dear Parents, Welcome to the first curriculum letter of the year from Gingerbread Man Base. This letter is to tell you about the activities we have planned for this term and ways you may be able to support your child’s learning at home.

Thank you all so much for making Mrs Millband, Mrs Miller and me so welcome when we came to visit you and your child at home. It was lovely to be able to meet all the children again in a familiar environment before their first day at school. The children have really impressed me this week, they are settling in well and very happy during the school day - I am really looking forward to all the exciting things we will be doing together!

When the children arrive in the morning Room 2 will be shut and first thing activities will take place in the main classroom. We will then open Room 2 and the outside area once we have talked about the day together and I have taken the register. The children will hopefully be able to use the outside area every day but as it starts to colder and probably wetter we would like the children to have a pair of wellies or old shoes which they can get wet and muddy and of course waterproof coats, hats and gloves if needed!!

Thank you to those of you that have provided these already please come and see me if you need to talk to me about any of this.

As you will have read in your Reception handbook, Reception is part of The Early Years Foundation Stage ( EYFS ) this is the stage of children’s development from birth to the end of their reception year in school. The EYFS Framework describes how early years practitioners should work with children and their families to support their development and learning. Four themes underpin the EYFS guidance

What are the EYFS themes?

Theme: A Unique Child Principle: Every child is a unique child who is consistently learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and selfassured.

Theme: Positive Relationships Principle: Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.

Theme: Enabling Environments Principle: Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and carers.

Theme: Learning And Development Principle: Children develop and learn in different ways. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special needs and disabilities.

The principles underpin all that practitioners are required to do. They foster the characteristics of effective learning which are: • Playing and exploring • Active learning • Creating and thinking critically Young children learn best through play and through careful observation they are provided with appropriate play and learning experiences. The activities they engage in underpin all the skills they need in order to work towards the Early Learning Goals in the following areas of learning.

Area of learning and development Prime Areas Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Physical Development Communication and Language

Specific Areas Literacy Mathematics Understanding the world

Expressive arts and design

Aspect Making relationships Self- confidence and self- awareness Managing feelings and behaviour Moving and handling Health and self -care Listening and attention Understanding Speaking Reading Writng Numbers Shape, space and measure People and communities The world Technology Exploring and using media Being imaginative

During the early part of this term one of our main focuses is on the personal, social and emotional area of learning as our priority is to ensure that all the children settle in happily and feel safe and secure in school. This work will be based on this term’s SEAL theme of New Beginnings - this will include discovering all the learning areas in our classroom, learning to work and play independently and becoming really familiar with our daily routine and organization. We will also be talking about our right to play and learn in our classroom and our responsibility to keep it a safe and happy place where we can learn together. We will also be learning how to tell others when we feel happy and sad. They will be getting to know each other and us really well and as part of this we have been sharing the lovely ‘All about me ‘books and ‘Treasure Bags’ that you and the children have worked so hard on during the holidays- they are all fabulous – thank you for your help with this.

Our learning this term will begin with developing the theme of ‘All about Me’. We will use the All about Me books that you have all worked so hard on during the holidays as a starting point to talk about our families and pets developing further the theme of Our Pets as the term progresses. We will be focusing on speaking and listening skills this term as well as providing lots of opportunities for using early writing inside and outside our classroom. We will also be making sure we can all recognize our own names and are able to write them ourselves. At home you can encourage your child to write whenever possible –making lists, taking messages, making cards, invitations , letters to friend at school or maybe they could watch you

write a list or take a phone message, send an email or text message!!! We will be reading lots of nursery rhymes and talking about rhyming words.

During this term I will start to send home reading books. The children will bring home a book to share from our class book corner and a ‘reading’ book .At the moment the children are bringing home a book from the book corner and you can help them choose a new book each morning when they arrive at school – thank you. There is a book box is in Room 2 and our classroom. You have also received a home /school reading book in which we can communicate with each other about your child’s reading. Please bring in your child’s book bag every day- thank you. I intend to hold a short meeting to explain about our phonics teaching and the reading in more detail and I will send out the details soon.

We will also be starting our phonics (letter sounds) work this term and again I will explain more about this at the reading meeting, but the children will be bringing home a book of sounds to practice at home.

To further support our reading and writing and sound work we will be sending home our class bears- Milly, Billy and Bobby. Every weekend three children will take one of the bears home, they will have a diary to write or draw in and also a game or activity to do. Please give them plenty of time and encouragement to do this themselves and then the children can bring them back on Monday and share the diary with us.

The majority of our mathematics work this term will focus on sorting, matching and counting and grouping activities. You can support this at home by, for example counting cars as you drive along, getting 3 or 6 fruits at the fruit shop, sorting out pairs of socks in the washing basket. Try spotting numbers when you are out in town or in the car. We will also be exploring all sorts of patterns - number and shape patterns , patterns all around us - in school, in the natural world, in the environment , word and letter patterns and sound patterns. You could talk to your child at home and when you are out about different patterns you could introduce some of the language of pattern such as straight lines, zig-zags, spots, stripes, checks, spirals and reinforce the names of basic shapes such as circle, square, triangle, rectangle etc .Later in the term we will also be talking about the changing seasons and looking for signs of autumn as well as investigating night and day and autumn festivals.

As we find out and talk about different things you can support your child by talking about the themes and ideas we are exploring in class at home and encouraging them to look for things at home to show us. I will keep you informed on our class blog.

During our P.E lessons there will be a mixture of basic skills outside while the weather is still good and indoor gymnastics. We do of course spend time on getting changed carefully and organizing our clothes - you can support this by encouraging your child with dressing and undressing themselves . As I mentioned during the home visits it would be most helpful if you could leave the P.E kit in school all week as this means we can be flexible with our P.E sessions-thank you.

We want the children to become happy, independent learners this year and you can support this especially when they are getting dressed, tidying up and bringing their things into school-encourage them to hang their own things up and put their book bags away themselves.

At the moment we are busy showing our special books and treasure bags but as the term progresses I will be sending home special boxes for the children to put things in to bring in and show us - I will send out a letter explaining this in more detail when the boxes start to come home. Obviously if your child has something to show us linked to our learning then we will be very happy to share that with the class.

Please remember to let us know who your child will be going home with if there is a change from the usual routine - thank you. Please check your child’s book bag each day for letters and messages – thank you. Don’t forget to look at our school website and particularly our class blog which you can access from the website, it will be full of information and photos about our learning.

Lastly, as I said during the home visits I am always available to answer questions, explain things, talk about any concerns or worries you may have or just to chat!!

I am very much looking forward to the coming year and working in partnership with you to give your children a super start to their school career.

Best wishes,

Mrs Flavell, Mrs Millband & Mrs Miller

In Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole