Literacy

Sharing books and stories to promote a love of reading and talking about books.  We will look at all kinds of Growing this half term. We will start by thinking about how we grow and then look at the popular story of Jasper’s Beanstalk. The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle will be our next focus, providing a hook to exploring seeds and the life cycle of plants. We will look at fruits and vegetables and finally celebrate Easter.

Here are just a selection of the books we may use:

Phonics

We will finish Phase 3 digraphs and trigraphs using Pearson Bug Club and then have a time for revision. We will also have a focus on tricky words that come in to this phase.

Our aim is for children to be able to hear the sound, recognise the letter and use them to blend and segment words for reading and writing.

Please see the support materials sent home each week and don’t forget to make use of the Bug Club website and allocated phonic books.

Mathematics

Personal, Social and Emotional development

Physical Development

This area will focus on developing gross motor skills through activities designed to strengthen muscles and engage in physical games outside. Fine motor skills and pencil grip will be developed through focussing on letter formation linked to our Phonic teaching, opportunities to make patterns, trace, thread, use dough and other malleable materials and to use a variety of tools in different contexts.                                                                                                                                       

Communication and Language

Talk forms a major part of the experiences in Early Years. Children will be encouraged to engage in daily story times, learn rhymes poems and songs and engage in non-fiction books. We will introduce new vocabulary through our story choices and help the children to articulate their ideas and thoughts in well-formed sentences and to become more confident speakers in a range of contexts.

We have been sent some advice on how to develop communication and language in the home.  Please click here to find out more.

Understanding the World

This half term we will continue to look at seasonal changes around us and developing observation skills, learning new vocabulary and making simple comparisons. Using our school grounds, we will explore Spring.

Through our themes this half term we will also look at seeds, plants, how they things grow, life cycle of a plant, what plants need to grow and the parts of a plant.

Expressive Art and Design

Our aim is to offer our children the opportunity to explore different tools, materials and techniques through our play provision. We will explore collage through flowers, making clay mandalas with seeds, mixing shades of green for Jasper’s Beanstalk,  printing in the style of Andy Warhol.

They will also have the chance to visit the music studio and learn some new songs and to add movement to music. We will have a focus on Creating simple actions to songs, learning how to move to a beat and expressing feelings and emotions through movement to music.