EYFS
See our curriculum map below to find out which exciting topics we will be learning about this year.
Topic: All about me
Sparkling start: Tour of the school
We had lots of fun settling into school and exploring our new environment. We spend part of the day in our own classes and use the rest of the time to explore the other classroom and outside area. Our teachers have been supporting us to make new friends, learn how to share and to follow our class and school rules. Some of our favourite areas to explore are the mud kitchen, creative activities, role play and construction areas. During our first few weeks of school we work hard to get into a routine and manage our emotions. We read the story 'The Colour Monster' to help us learn about different emotions. We went on a tour of the school for our sparking start and we visited the hall, kitchen, library, big playground and the forest. Here are some photographs of us exploring our new environment.
Topic: Through my eyes
Fabulous Finish: Christmas craft themed family fun time
This half term we have been exploring the topic of 'Through my eyes' where we have been discussing the different celebrations we have experienced with our family and friends. Each week our text in literacy was based on a different event or celebration, this included writing a birthday party and wedding invitation, designing a poster for a meteor shower, writing a recipe to make bread and writing a letter to Santa. We also learnt about the different special events of Diwali, Halloween, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, Hanukkah and Christmas. We enjoyed our 'Home Learning' challenge of creating our own Remembrance Day Poppy during half-term and showing our friends our creations. We excitedly made our own biscuits in our children's kitchen that were designed to be wedding favours, we also enjoyed decorating and eating them for our snack! We then used any left over biscuits to conduct our own science experiment, we place a biscuit in three different solutions which were water, salt and red coloured liquid. We made predictions of what we thought would happen to each biscuit after being placed in the solutions and then after observing them throughout the day we looked at the results to see if our predictions were correct. To celebrate Christmas we put on a Christmas performance where we sang a selection of traditional and new songs for our grownups to come and watch, we also took part in Christmas dinner day and the school trip to the pantomime. At the end of the half-term we invited our grownups in to celebrate our fabulous finish of have a Christmas craft themed family fun time which also had a reading focus.
Topic: People who help us
Sparkling start: Being visited by the police
This half term we have been exploring the topic of 'People who help us'. We started off our topic by having a very special visit by the police, we really enjoyed learning about the role of a police officer. We got to sit in the police car and explore their different uniform, equipment and even got to turn on their siren! Throughout this half-term we have been exploring the different professions of people who help us in our day to day lives. We learnt about the police, fire fighters, doctors, vets and dentists. We enjoyed sharing our ideas about what we already know about these everyday superheroes and then sharing our new knowledge with our friends. This half-term we celebrated 'Chinese New Year', we started off by trying a selection of Chinese food where we really enjoyed the rice and crackers. We then got creative and made our own Chinese lanterns using the colours of red, gold, silver, orange and yellow. We learnt that these are considered lucky colours in China. We then attended and took part in a Chinese dance workshop, we were able to explore and use the props of Chinese paper parasols and became part of a Chinese dragon. At the end of this half-term we took part in the NSPCC 'Number Day' where we dressed up for digits, we came to school wearing clothes with numbers on them and completed a variety of maths and number activities to help us practise and raise money for such a good cause. In the last week of term we invited our grown ups into school for another 'Family Fun Time' session where we focused on our phonics, we showed our grown ups how we use our 'Fred Fingers' to sound out words and how we use our phonics in our everyday writing.
Topic: Down at the bottom of the garden
Fab finish: Easter craft family fun time and hatching ducklings
This half-term we have been exploring the topic of 'Down at the bottom of the garden' which has been focusing on different minibeasts, growing and changing. We started off by reading the stories of 'Jack and The Beanstalk' and 'The Enormous Turnip' where we learnt about what plants need to grow which allowed us to plant our own bean seeds and care for them. From this we then created our own bean lifecycles where we could confidently talk about the different stages from planting a bean to it growing its own bean pod. We enjoyed reading the book 'Farmyard Hullaballoo' where we spotted the different rhyming words and created our own farm animal rhyming poems. We had some very exciting guests arrive in class which were 6 white eggs, we enjoyed observing them hatch into 6 beautiful ducklings which were brown and yellow. We learnt to care for them and enjoyed watching them have their first swim and as we were very caring and gentle we were able to hold them. Whilst enjoying caring for the ducklings we created our own duck lifecycles and duckling observational drawings, where we looked at the ducklings in detail to include their features. To continue our theme of growing we also had the opportunity to care and observe 5 caterpillars change into butterflies by making their own cocoons right in front of our eyes. At the beginning of the half-term we welcomed in Mr Massey our skipping expert who spent the day teaching us how to correctly skip and how to use a skipping rope, we have continued to practise our skipping skills in our outside area. We went on our first year group trip to Clacton Library to learn about the services they provide and where we got our own library cards so we could check out a book to take home with us. We also completed a variety of minibeast themed activities around the library and even met a giant bee! After our library trip we then celebrated 'World Book Day' where we dressed up as our favourite book characters and shared different stories with one another. To end the half-term we had our fab finish of inviting our grown ups into school to complete different minibeast and Easter themed activities such as making our own book marks and hanging Easter decorations.
