Reading
This term, our focus story was ‘Splash, Anna Hibiscus!’ Anna lives by the sea in Africa and loves to splash in the water with others, but all her family members are busy. We have been discussing the features we might see and activities we might do at the seaside—both at our seaside and the one where Anna lives in Africa. We’ve been learning and using words like jetty, parasol, shack, and palm tree. The children drew pictures of the seaside and talked about what they enjoy doing at the beach.
RE
This term, our theme for RE is ‘Nature’. This unit explores how we can be helpful members of society. The children have learned about the creation story and discussed the importance of appreciating what nature offers us, as well as how we can best look after the environment.
Phonics
Children in Foundation have made tremendous progress in phonics, where they are able to read CVC words confidently and independently. They have also mastered how to read alien words with greater accuracy and fluency by identifying the special friends. Most children have also learnt how to write sentences using the sounds learnt and apply finger spaces and full stops. We are beyond proud for how far they have come.
Safety
In preparation for the summer holidays, this week we have been talking about how to stay safe at home, in the sun and spoke about water safety. Children understood how to keep safe in different situations by;
- Wearing a hat
- Applying sun cream
- Drinking plenty of water
- Staying in the shade when possible
- Asking adults for help when they are in the kitchen
- Always listen to adult when playing in or near water.
Maths
This term we have been learning about how to share out equally and identify odd and even numbers. Children have been using using different mathematical resources such as numicon, counters and cubes to prove whether a number is odd or even. Similarly, Children have been exploring how to read maps using prepositional language and have been able to draw a maps of their local area.
Continuous Provision
At the beginning of the last half term the children enjoyed learning all about dinosaurs. This involved finding out about when dinosaurs lived and what they ate for example, we used the vocabulary carnivore, omnivore and herbivore. The children became very good at recognizing the different dinosaurs and being able to pronounce their names! We set up a dinosaur cave within our setting which the children enjoyed exploring. It has also been good to see the children using their creative skills to make various dinosaur crafts.
Science (Understanding the world)
We are now turning our focus onto studying mini beasts and the children had fun when we went on a bug hunt around the school environment. They found many different mini beasts including ants, bees, ladybirds, butterflies and spiders. The main highlight for the children was when on Science day they let the class butterflies out of their net and watch them fly away. We had watched them grow and hatch from the caterpillar stage. We are looking forward to a visit from Teaching Talons next week when the children will have the opportunity to look at a range of animals and mini beasts at close hand and to learn some interesting facts about them.



Writing
This half term it has been so encouraging to see the enormous progress that the children have made with their writing skills. They have independently written about their own dinosaur which they drew as well as about the butterflies which we hatched. Just this last week they wrote about what they would like to be when they grow up.
