Welcome back to summer 1

Welcome back we hope you had a wonderful break with your children. We are looking forward to seeing them back and hearing all their half term news. Hopefully we will have a half term filled with lots of sunshine.

Our F2 journey is passing very quickly and now we only have one full term left. The children are loving their learning and trying so hard to keep making their brains grow. They are doing so well trying to achieve their 5 weekly challenges in our areas of provision and have really got into the routine of reading the ‘Word of the Day’ every morning.

Our texts this half term are ‘The Woolly Bear Caterpillar ’ and ‘Caterpillar to Butterfly’ a non-fiction text. We will begin by reading ‘The Woolly Bear Caterpillar which will present our class with the opportunity to learn about the life cycle of a butterfly through a lovely story. They will continue to practise orally saying a sentence and writing it down, remembering capital letters, finger spaces, full stops and checking what they have written. Also using their phonics knowledge to make their writing phonetically plausible. Our second text, ‘Caterpillar to Butterfly’ is a non-fiction text which gives children another opportunity to explore a non-fiction text and recall the features that make it different to a story text. During this time we will have the chance to look after some caterpillars in our classroom, watch them grow, form a chrysalis and develop into butterflies. The children will then have the opportunity to release them outdoors.

In maths, we will be exploring numbers to twenty and then looking at the counting patterns for counting beyond twenty. The children will then learn to add and take away with numbers to ten and begin to do some problem solving using these addition and subtraction skills. Finally at the end of this half term the children will explore 2D shapes by manipulating them to make new shapes and pictures. We will continue our daily phonics lessons and the children will continue to develop their confidence segmenting and blending words focusing largely on phase 3 sound knowledge and practising the tricky words from this phase. In Understanding the world and Exploring Arts and Design we will continue to explore the season of spring, looking at how plants grow and look at different minibeasts. The children will think about caring for their natural environment.

Reading is key to all learning and we would encourage you all to share books daily with your children. Developing a love of reading from an early age is essential for every child. We will be continuing our guided reading sessions four times each week and the children will continue to bring a reading book home each Friday alongside a book for pleasure for you to read together. Please remember to practise the children’s phonemes and tricky words with them as much as possible as this will really help them with their reading.

Each day follows the same routine which the children thrive upon as they know what to expect. Please see below:

8:30-9:00 – Our doors open from 8.30am when the children can self-register and access Calm & Connect activities and check in with staff

9:00-9:10 – Register, Prayer and Song

9:10-9.30 – Literacy Carpet Session

9:30-10:20 – Adult led activity Literacy, Indoor and Outdoor Continuous Provision, Snack

10:20-10:40 – Phonics

10:40-11.20 – Indoor and Outdoor Continuous provision, Snack

11:20-11.45 – Maths Carpet Session

11:50-1.00 – Lunchtime

1:00-1:20 – My Happy Mind Monday/RE/PE or Handwriting (each day differs)

1:20-2.50 – Guided Reading, Indoor and outdoor provision, Interventions, Adult led activities through provision

2:50-3:05 – Story/Rhyme time

We will continue to use Class Dojo to communicate with parents - look out for messages posted on here which include key dates, activities to do at home and class updates. Please feel free to send any photos in of what the children have been up to outside of school, we love looking at these photos together in class.

A few quick reminders - We will be starting to access the hall for PE from this half term - PE Day is Wednesday, please ensure your child comes to school wearing their School PE Kit and pumps or trainers, the children will need a jacket or hoodie on top of their t-shirt please. Children also need to bring a coat every day - we do go out come rain or shine.

Children also need a water bottle each day.

Please make sure all uniform is labelled with your child’s name including their coat and water bottle.

As the weather gets warmer and sunnier please apply sun cream before school when appropriate and provide your child with a hat that will shade their face from the sun.

We are excited to see the children continue to have fun with their learning and make more progress.

As always our door is always open, please don’t sit at home worrying about anything, get in touch if you have any questions.

Thank you for your continued support!

Mrs Jones, Mrs Lyon & Miss Ballard x