F1 Welcome

Welcome back to our F1 class page!

We hope you have all had a fantastic half term and are ready to come back to our lovely class. We have a great term planned, full of exciting activities and lots of brain growing!

This half term, we will be exploring the topics of ‘Animals in Cold Places’ through our class books ‘I Can Fly’ and ‘The Bear Snores On’.

We will be learning about penguins and other animals that live in cold habitats, as well as exploring ice and snow. We will also be going on a winter walk around our school grounds and investigating what things we notice about it in the winter - what can we see? what animals can we hear? what is different from our Autumn walk?
In Literacy - our main focus will be to continue to practise our pre-writing shapes and the letters from our name. We will be exploring the characters from our class stories, joining in with the story and creating our own story maps.
In Maths - we will be learning about the numbers 3,4 and 5 and practising our ‘subitising’ skills. Subitising is when we can look at an amount and immediately know how many there are without having to count.

In Understanding the World - we will be putting our scientist lab coats on and exploring the concepts of melting and freezing with ice and coloured water. We will also be having a go at creating our own ‘sticky ice’ to make ice towers! Towards the end of this half term, we will be learning about our family history so please keep your eyes on Tapestry as we may have a few photograph requests to compliment this :)

In RE ‘The Vine and the Branches’ - we will be continuing with Jesus’ story, moving on to his visit from The Three Kings and even learning the Michael Rosen poem ‘We’re Going on a Star Hunt’ (to theme of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt) and making stars like the on the The Three Kings followed to visit Jesus.

We will continue with our daily phonics lessons through listening for rhythms, patterns and rhyming in Nursery Rhymes. We will also continue to follow our ‘My Happy Mind’ framework - learning about our brains and our different character strengths.

 We love going outside in our EYFS and we have an amazing outdoor area so we will be learning outside come rain or shine! Unfortunately, our Great British weather is unpredictable so the children will need a raincoat and wellies every day and hopefully, a sun hat! These can be left in school, alongside a spare change of clothes - play can be messy and the children will have access to water, sand, playdough and paint, amongst other things :)

Please let us know if your child develops any new allergies or conditions, so we can keep our records up to date and your children safe. Thank you!

Please ensure your child also has a water bottle each day - busy minds and bodies need lots of hydration :)

We will be using the Tapestry app as our main communication link – please ensure you have activated your login and that you check regularly as there will be pictures and key dates and information regarding upcoming events. We really love to hear about what the children get up to home and we share weekend stories every Monday morning as part of ‘Communication and Language’ sessions. Please share any activities that you get up to at home - this can be something super exciting like the beach or the park or something simple like reading a bedtime story and having a family dinner! Please ask us if you need any support with this and we will do our best to help you.

We can’t wait to get to know your wonderful children and watch them make their brains grow each day.

Our door is always open so please pop in if you have any questions.

Thank you for your continued support.

Mrs O’Hanlon and Mrs Barber

F1 Team