We can’t wait for a term of sunshine and summer weather so that we can get outdoors even more. This term we are looking forward to lots of learning about animals and plants.  Starting off with our trip to Sacrewell Farm.

Communication and Language 

Through play, the children listen to each other and take turns in conversation. In our circle times, we always look at how important it is to look and listen when our friends are talking. When speaking and through phonics, the children are working on speaking clearly and expanding their vocabulary. They will be learning lots of new words linked to animals and their habitats as well as new words linked to weather, plants and growing. Repetition is really important, so when we introduce new words, we will keep saying these words. We will expand and extend their vocabulary and encourage the children to use these in their own speaking. Open-ended activities such as the sand or water can open a new world when fish, sharks or octopus are swimming around! As they talk about the octopus, we might link together new words such as slimy tentacles or the shark with its sharp, vicious teeth. Following from last term where we talked a lot about pushing, pulling and travelling, we will continue to look at doing words such as eating, swimming, hunting.

They will retell the story of Peter and the Wolf.

Our role play area will be a farm shop or plant shop, depending on what the children decide. They will also have lots of opportunities to role-play in the outdoor area.  We will have masks linked to our Peter and the Wolf story, but as you know, the children are constantly inventing and changing, so we will take their lead.

Vocabulary: listen, animals, plants, babies, habitat, growth, soil, imagine,

Literacy

This half-term our focus book will be Peter and the Wolf. The children are now well rehearsed in retelling the stories through their acting and by using a story map, so we look forward to this warning tale and the role play that we can enjoy from it. The children have been really focused in our read write inc sessions and continue to make very good progress. They will be working through the green word, red words and the books for their level. All groups are continuing to work on their fluency, to Fred in their head and repeat sentences they have decoded to be able to understand what they have read. In addition to our key story, we will write letters to the farm to ask questions about what we would like to find out and then after our trip, we will write thank you letters and say which part we enjoyed the most. Each day, we will continue to practise our handwriting, spellings and when the children come in, they will start by independently writing a sentence to match a picture. These will be linked to the season, weather, plants or animals.

Vocabulary: wolf, caution, warning, predator, hunter, herbivore, carnivore, habitat, tractor, field, crop,

Physical Development

In our PE sessions, we will be using the skills that we have learnt from last term and put these into team games. We will continue in all physical activities such as the daily mile, outdoor play, snack times and playtimes to discuss our bodies. Names of parts of the body, the importance of a healthy diet, vitamins, minerals and calcium that we have in our fruit or milk for example. When moving, we will draw attention to the muscles that they are using. When doing dough disco, we talk about how this is strengthening the muscles in our fingers and hands. When doing peer massage, we discuss how this helps us to calm down and relax and how important that is for our minds and bodies.

Vocabulary: throw, catch, kick, goal, target, aim, shoot, dribble, pass.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

In our circle times this half-term, we will look at ‘Challenges’. The children will understand why we have rules, the importance of persistence and perseverance in the face of challenges, learn how to communicate effectively with others, practice 'grounding' coping strategies, and to learn new skills that will help them show resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge.  This will be done through a variety of activities such as tower building, den building, team races and circus skills. Through everything we do, the children are learning to manage their feelings and behaviour, to have a good attitude to learning and to build resilience. We have established our class rules that all of the children contributed to. We will continue with our peer massage sessions as a way of children developing ways to self- regulate and calm themselves as well as showing respect and care to their friends.

In our circle times, we will look in depth at feelings. How to identify different feelings in themselves and others, feeling jars, coping strategies, describing feelings and facial expressions.

Vocabulary: emotions, feelings, coping, describe, happy, excited, nervous, anxious, angry, calm, scared, loved. 

Mathematics

We will be moving on to look at numbers beyond 10. With cubes, 10 frames and bead strings, the children will compose numbers beyond 10 and see them as a 10 and a part for example 10 and 3 is 13 or 2 tens and 3 are 23. Through daily counting and songs, we will count in 2s, 5s, 10s and forwards and backwards beyond 10. By playing games of bingo the children will match numbers to pictures of different amounts over 10. With shapes, the children will look at how they can arrange them in different ways, they will be given arrangements to see if they can replicate these.  Using real objects both inside and outside through play and with adult led activities, we will be adding and taking away. Using stories such as, first there were 3 dinosaurs, then 2 more came along, how many dinosaurs now?

Vocabulary: more, less, count, forwards, backwards, bigger, ten frame, take away, add, subtract, same, different, puzzles, shape, arrange, match, rotate.

Understanding the World

Our focus is on plants and animals and how they are connected.

We will also focus on India and the plants and animals that are there and how the country, language, climate, clothing and animals is different to England. The children will be growing lots of different plants and watching them grow, learning about what a plant needs. Our trip to Sacrewell Farm will be a great opportunity for the children to extend their learning that they will have done in class about British farming and farm animals as well as crops and plants that we eat. In their play, children will be able to sort animals by their habitats, by whether they are herbivores or carnivores. They will find out the names of animal babies and match animals to their babies. In the water area a=outside, they will have lots of wonderful marine animals. We will look at the difference between fresh water and sea water creatures and animals.

Vocabulary: farm, wild, tame, herbivore, carnivore, grow, soil, plant, stem, flower, pollen, leaves, roots, crop, harvest, tractor, climate, temperature, weather, habitat, diet, seed, bean, bulb.

Expressive Arts and Design

The children will be getting crafty over the next few weeks and learning lots of new skills that they will be able to then use in other ways in their play and in the future. They will start with cutting skills, then more threading. Although we have had a go at threading, this is a tricky skill to master independently and is great for their fine motor skills so we will be threading with a range of materials. After this, we will be looking at different ways to join materials with glue, blue tac, sticky tape and folds. We will then make concertina paper snakes and finally flower designs and tissue paper flowers. At other times, the children will be able to continue exploring playdough, clay, watercolour and poster paints. There will be lots of opportunities to draw observations when we are outside and to draw plants.

Vocabulary:   join, attach, thread, concertina, scrunch, fold, paint, mix, stroke.

USEFUL WEBSITES

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/zf44jxs/videos/1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/parents/