How did that get in my lunchbox?

Our Theme This half term, our Reception children will be learning all about what happens on a farm and how food ends up in our lunchbox. During this time, we will be exploring a range of fiction and nonfiction books to find out facts about farms, animals and growing and enrich our story telling knowledge. We will be investigating a range of foods and where they come from, how plants grow, and what maps are used for. We will be using our communication skills to ask questions to find out more and discuss our topic.

Literacy

In Literacy, we will be continuing Little Wandle Phonics sessions where the children will be learning new graphemes, blending words for reading, reading tricky words and reading longer sentences and words. The children will be introduced to the phrase “chunk it” to help them break up a word with multiple syllables and segment for spelling. These sessions will take place daily. Children will have sounds and tricky words sent home which they will need to be practicing as much as possible at home. We will also have an English lesson which will focus on our current topic work. During this time, we will learn lots of new vocabulary, different ways to recall stories, and nonfiction books, make up our own stories, sentence writing, putting our phonics into action, share our ideas about our key texts, create descriptions, fact manuals, recipe cards and instruction manuals. The first week back we will have a story book focus of some of our favourite texts. On the Thursday of this week it is World Book day where we will be celebrating lots of different stories, Authors and Illustrators and dressing up as our favourite story characters .

Key Texts: The Gruffalo, Elmer, How did that get in my lunch box? And What the ladybird heard

Maths

In Maths, we follow a Maths Mastery approach to learning number, shape and measurement. We have a daily maths meeting after lunch where we practice counting, naming shapes, sequencing, more and less than a given number, measures, day, month, time and year, this really helps the children understand and use mathematical language. This half term our main focus will be learning about time, introducing the clock and talking about familiar times of the day such as the time to start school, for lunch, for the end of the school day. You could practice at home by looking at breakfast time, tea time and bed time. This half term we will be continuing learning all about the numbers in a practical way helping the children to grasp a deeper understanding of numbers 1-10. Our main focus will be; counting, number order, number composition and number comparison, the children will be expected to use mathematical language when talking about number and explaining their own number investigations. Our maths sessions will consist of a variety of ways to learn numbers such as; singing songs, playing games, telling stories and solving problems. Each number we learn will have a rhyme to help the children remember how to form the numeral. The rhyme sheet is attached to this letter.

Understanding the World

This half term, we will be continuing to explore the provision areas, during this time adults will extend our learning through well thought-out conversations whilst sharing this space with our friends. We will be discovering new skills, investigating provisions and completing focus task activities whilst becoming independent learners. We will go on a few adventures outdoors to our lovely field and wooded area to discover changes in the natural environment. We will be developing our Forest School area throughout the next 2 seasons using natural resources and working as a team. We will have a focus a natural world focus, exploring farmyards and what produce is created from farms such as; cheese, bread, milk, butter, ice cream, yoghurts omelettes and cakes. We will be investigating growing and observing what plants need to grow big and strong.

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In RE, we will be exploring different cultures, religious celebrations, and family routines. Our RE topic is What is Easter? We will be exploring signs of spring, baby animals, Easter celebration, Easter story and Easter symbols and what they mean.

Expressive Arts and Design 

This half term, our children will be exploring 2 new junk modelling skills joining with staples and joining using knots. Our artist of the half term is Giuseppe

Arcimboldo; they will be using real fruit to create compositions of fruit to create faces. They will continue using the craft area independently by selecting the materials and equipment they need to create their own master pieces. We will also be singing lots of songs as we head in into spring and using our bodies to create actions to go with the lyrics. The Reception children have now started attending singing assembly on a Tuesday morning which they are really enjoying and love having this time to sing with the whole school.

Physical Development 

This half term in PE, our focus is to continue learning throwing and catching. We will continue to build up these skills through hand eye coordination games, activities and use the skills in group games. The children will be working together in partnership, target practice, distance and short distance throwing, throwing different objects; bean bags, balls and hoops to become confident in ball skills.

Personal, social and emotional development

In PSED we will be growing our friendships, taking turns when exploring the classroom environment, listening to each other's ideas, showing care for our classroom and people in it and celebrating our differences. The focus this half term is ‘healthy me’ across the weeks we will be looking at how to keep a healthy body and healthy mind, what foods keep us healthy, how to keep clean and stranger danger. We will explore these themes through role play, class discussions, creative activities, songs, mindfulness and stories. Our aspirations this half term is, to keep a healthy body and healthy mind whilst always staying safe.

How you can help at home

Read a bedtime story to your child daily.

Take your child to the land of adventure in play.

Share the home reading book with your child at least 3 times a week.

Practice reading and writing phonic graphemes, blending words, and writing words.

Try sight reading tricky word hunt around your home.

Talk to your child about their experiences at school.

Discuss the changes in the seasons and weather with your child.