Early Years Foundation Stage 

(EYFS)

Welcome to Ash Tree Class!

 The class teacher is Miss Crane

with Mrs Looker and Miss Moore supporting the children. 

Welcome to Fir Tree Class!

The class teacher is Miss Mitchell 

with Miss Allen, Mrs Mathieson and Mrs Amey supporting the children.

Mr Bush, Mrs McDavitt and Mrs Fenty may be in class at different times throughout the week.

Mrs Casey will teach Cookery.

Spring 2024

Our topic this half term is Frozen Planet where we will be focusing on the season of winter, The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo’s Child, the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Ice Age, freezing and melting and how we look after our planet. We will also be learning about the family custom of Chinese New Year. Next half term, our topic will be What a wonderful world, where we will focus on animals and their babies, the lifecycle of animals, how we look after animals, the season of spring, farm animals and Dinosaurs. Towards the end of term, we will be embracing the wonderful theme of Easter!

Reading and Phonics

·  We follow the Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) phonics programme. This is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme which is designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending. It comprises of daily phonics lessons to teach children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language. We will be continuing to work through Phase 3.

Writing

• We will listen to a variety of fun and stimulating stories, take part in role play and enjoy practical experiences to stimulate our creative ideas.
• We will practise forming our letters and continue to concentrate on holding our pencils correctly. 
• We will practise writing CVC, CVCC and CCVC words e.g. cat, duck and chip.
• We will practise writing simple sentences, using a capital letter, finger   spaces and a full stop.

Maths

• We will introduce 0.
• We will compare numbers to 5.
• We will explore numbers 5-10.
• We will compare mass and capacity.
• We will explore and compare length, height and time.
• We will learn about 3D shapes.

General Information

P.E 

• Monday or Tuesday (outdoor) 
•  Wednesday (indoor).

Reminders

•          Please label clearly all P.E kits, uniform, shoes, coats, bags etc.
•          Please encourage your child to be independent in dressing themselves, so that changing for P.E is easier for them.
•         Children cannot do P.E. with earrings in, so please remove them on P.E. days – Local Authority policies do not allow us to remove children’s earrings.
•          Please ensure that your child brings in a bottle of water each day, not juice.
•       The school supplies a piece of fruit every day, but please feel free to provide a piece of fruit in a separate named container (not a lunchbox) for your child, if you wish. This will be eaten at morning break. Please ensure any snack or packed lunch is also nut-free, and grapes are cut in two lengthways. Please bear in mind we are a nut free school and have children in EYFS with severe nut allergies.

Support at home

Reading activities

Daily reading is an important part of the children’s home learning; however, this does not have to mean sitting with your child whilst they read to you.  You could:

•  Play Eye Spy
• Play ‘spot the word/letter’ in a favourite book or a newspaper.
• Use letter cards (or written on pieces of paper) to play snap, or pairs.
• Make up interesting stories with each other 
•  Write a shopping list
•  Create silly sentences
•  Snuggle up to enjoy a good bedtime story together

Please note in the Reading Diary to show a reading activity has been done.

Maths activities

You can play simple maths games with your child to practise key skills e.g:

• Counting stairs as you climb them, fruit or physical activities
• Weighing and comparing weights whilst cooking
• Spotting shapes and numbers in the environment

Please encourage your child to form letters and numbers correctly by showing them the correct way to form them if they form them incorrectly.

With thanks,

Miss Crane and Miss Mitchell

For further information about our curriculum – please see the long term plan below