EYFS
Autumn Term Newsletter - September 2024
Summer Term Newsletter April 2024
NEWSLETTER – EYFS: ST FRANCIS & ST BERNADETTE
Spring 2024
Welcome back after our lovely Christmas break! We hope you all had a restful Christmas holiday, and we wish you all a very happy and healthy new year. On behalf of the EYFS team, we would like to thank you all for your very generous gifts and warm wishes.
Our topics this term are the Post Office, where we will be learning about the different kinds of post, how they are sorted and delivered, and Real Life Superhero’s, Doctors, Nurses, Police, etc
As part of the new EYFS Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements we will be talking about oral health. We will be practising how to brush our teeth effectively using a set of false teeth and a dentist will be visiting us later in the term.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
We follow the school Religious Education Curriculum ‘The Way, The Truth and The Life.’ Our topic will be about Getting to know God. You may like to talk to your child about how they can show their love for Jesus.
COMMUNICATION & LANGUAGE
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Talks and listens to others.
• Makes up stories and retells them.
• Responds to what they hear with comments and questions.
• Follows instructions involving several actions.
• Answer questions (how and why) in relation to stories or their experiences.
To further enhance their confidence and develop their communication skills, we will be having ‘Show and Tell’ sessions over the course of the term. We will inform you when it is your child’s turn to bring in an item that is special to them and they will want to talk about.
Activities to do at home:
• Join in with your child’s imaginative play. Encourage your child to talk about what their character is doing and why.
• Encourage your child to predict possible endings to stories and events.
PERSONAL, SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Interacts with others.
• Deals with their emotions.
• Copes with new situations.
• Manages their feelings and behaviour.
• Looks after their own health and hygiene
Activities to do at home:
• Play games that involve turn taking and sharing.
• Encourage your child to draw pictures or take photographs of their favourite activities or places, to help them describe their individual preferences. • Talk about fair and unfair situations, your child’s feelings about fairness, and how we can make things fair.
• Encourage your child to talk about their likes, dislikes, abilities as well as describing themselves in a positive manner.
• Encourage them to be sensitive to the needs and feelings of others. • Encourage your child to dress and undress himself/herself.
LITERACY
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Explores books.
• Learns phonemes to enable them to read (See attached Phonics Phase 3 sounds) • Links sounds to letters to begin to write.
• Understands what they have read.
• Writes tricky words and sentences.
Activities to do at home:
• Read stories, poems and non-fiction books.
• Use daily reading opportunities to ask them why and how questions about stories they have read.
• Encourage your child to join in with everyday writing e.g. shopping lists, short sentences about what they have watched, read or
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Moving, using large movements; running, jumping and
climbing.
• Uses small scale movements; cutting, drawing and
threading.
• Handles toys and equipment safely and sensibly.
• Form their letters correctly and make them sit on the line.
Activities to do at home:
• At the playground set your child challenges such as ‘Can you get all the way around the climbing frame without your knees touching?’
• Encourage your child to help with the cooking at home and discuss safety issues when using knives and scissors.
• Encourage them to dress and undress independently, especially buttons.
MATHEMATICS
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Solves problems using their own ideas and by working with others.
• Recognise instantly the number of objects in a group without
counting.
• Counts more than 10 objects accurately.
• Compare the number of objects in a group and say which has more and which has fewer.
• Counts reliably from 0-20.
• Talks about size, shape, weight, time and distance.
Activities to do at home:
• Sing songs and rhymes involving counting on and back in ones, twos, fives and tens. • Ask ‘silly’ questions, e.g. show a tiny box and ask if there is a bicycle on it. Encourage your child to explain their responses.
• Encourage your child to help measure and weigh when cooking together. • Use everyday items like fruits, vegetables, pegs, to demonstrate adding and subtracting and encourage the use of Mathematical language e.g. add, take away, equal/total.
• Read door and bus numbers when outside to help with number recognition.
UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Explores the world around them both living and non-living looking at similarities, differences and change.
• Explore images of familiar situations in the past.
• Enjoys and participates in festivals relating to their own and other cultures.
Activities to do at home:
• Talk to your child about your family, culture, religion and where you live. • Talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members.
• Look at similarities and differences between themselves and others. • Observe and talk about animals, plants and the changes they undergo.
EXPRESSIVE ARTS AND DESIGN
This area of learning relates to how your child:
• Enjoys messy activities, exploring what happens.
• Pretends and role plays things they have seen and experienced.
• Participates in musical and dance activities.
• Uses different materials to create new things.
Activities to do at home:
• Encourage them to introduce a story line into their role play.
• Encourage your child to be creative at home and talk about what they have created. • Explore colour mixing using the 3 prime colours (red, yellow and blue). • Junk modelling using different materials. Encourage them to talk about how they can make their models better.
OUTSIDE LEARNING
As we plan to learn and teach both indoors and out of doors this term, your child will need to bring on the following labeled items which will be kept on your child’s peg: • Spare socks/tights.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
✓ Please send in boxes, clean bottles, old magazines, wrapping paper, buttons and scraps of materials to add to our creative area.
✓ We would be very grateful for donations of toys, especially vehicles and dressing up clothes, that you do not need anymore. Please put these in bags and hand them in to the Reception Teachers.
✓ Please make sure that your child brings their red reading record and story book to school every day as the adults read with different groups of children daily.
✓ We are always looking for people in different works of life and those with special skills/talents to share what they do with the children. If you would like to help please speak to any of the Reception teachers.
✓ St Francis will be doing PE on a Friday and St Bernadette on Thursday and their FULL PE kit should be in school throughout the week. Due to the cold weather, they will need to have a tracksuit in School for their PE lessons. Please ensure that all items of clothing are properly labelled.
GILLIAN SIMPSON/AFOMA EROKWU
EYFS Class Teacher
SUMMER NEWSLETTER – ST FRANCIS CLASS & ST BERNADETTE
Dear Parents,
Welcome back to School. We hope you had a lovely Easter. Now we are planning for the Summer Term and it would really help your child if you could do any of the following with him/her at home.
RE
Our topic for this term is New Life, we are going to be looking at how the resurrection of Jesus has brought joy to us and how He expects us to share the good news with others. To help develop your child’s understanding of this topic encourage them to think of ways that they can bring joy to others.
Literacy
Let your child watch you when you write a note, a list, a card, letter or email. This helps them to understand how ‘useful’ writing can be – it’s part of how we communicate. Encourage your child to write things such as shopping lists, letters to family members, birthday cards for friends and even stories about their favourite topic e.g. animals, plants, cars etc.
Read with your child every day and if this is not possible then at least three times a week. Please keep note of this in the red reading record. Continue to ask your child questions about what they have read to check their understanding. You can also develop your child’s understanding of the story by asking them to retell or act out the story. Make a habit of explaining the meaning of new words they come across in the reading books as they read. This helps to improve their vocabulary. Please note that reading for pleasure books will continue to be changed on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Collins e-books are changed on Wednesdays. We do read with each child throughout the week so please make sure that the reading record and reading book is brought to school every day.
Numeracy
Point out numbers on buses and doors
Subitising (recognise quantities without counting) up to 10
Count up to 20 objects, touching and saying a number name for each one.
Count actions
Practise writing numbers from 0 - 20.
Use every day experiences to double and half objects, “We’ve got 10 strawberries and there’s only two of us so how many strawberries will you get?”
Use mathematical language related to time, length e.g., hours, minutes, seconds, cm, m etc
The World Around Them
Talk about home and community and family life.
Look at similarities and differences in objects, living things and their environment.
Talk about the different states of matter- solids, liquids and gases and how these can change. Use this vocabulary whenever possible so they are familiar with them.
All of these add to your child’s experiences and their language and understanding. Remember to send in your child’s ‘WOW’ moments or email them to sao@ourladygraceschool.co.uk
We will continue to have PE on a Thursday – St Bernadette and Friday – St Francis, please ensure that your child has the appropriate PE kit: a black/navy tracksuit, blue shorts and a white Our Lady of Grace t-shirt (summer sportswear) and black plimsolls. All items of clothing are to be properly labelled as this will help us to find it promptly if it goes missing.
If you would prefer that your child brings in a pack lunch, please keep in mind that we are a healthy/nut free school. Items such as juice, crisps, chocolate and sweets are not permitted. Your child should have their own water bottle that they bring into school every day even if they have a school lunch.
We know how busy everyone is but the best teacher your child can have is YOU – working together we can really make a difference in helping your child to achieve his/her full potential.
We look forward to a great summer term.
Yours sincerely
NICOLA CAMPBELL/BEATA COGHEN/GILLIAN SIMPSON
Class Teachers