Curriculum overview

Welcome back everyone. We hope you had a restful half term break and are ready for the exciting weeks ahead.

RE

To begin this half term, we will continue our ‘Welcoming’ topic, where the children will learn about the religious signs and symbols used in baptism. We will baptise our baby dolly in our classroom, as we act out this celebration in order to provide the children with a deeper understanding of this rite.

We will then start our topic on ‘Birthdays’. In this topic the children will talk about how they feel as they wait for a birthday and their experience of celebrating a birthday. We will learn about the Advent Wreath and The Nativity story as we approach Christmas.

Literacy

In English, we will be doing shared reading and fun activities around our big books ‘The Jigaree’, ‘The Monster’s Party’ and ‘Smarty Pants’. Children will be given a word pack with some focus words from our big books to learn. They will be encouraged to make sentences from the story, as well as sentences of their own. We will also continue individual reading sessions with the children. Please read with your child at home every day.

We have just started sound work on Letters and Sounds Phase 2. In Phase 2, a set of letters is taught each week and in Chestnut class, we like to learn a sound a day. During our phonics sessions, children will learn how to say the sounds, recognise and read the sounds within words, and write the sounds. We will also practise oral segmenting and blending with the sounds we learn each week.

Communication and Language

We encourage the children to develop their speaking skills through a wide range of activities across the curriculum, including storytelling, singing and role play. We support them in modelling language and using new vocabulary as they play. They will be encouraged to speak in full sentences and to share their thoughts and ideas with their classmates. Our talk topics for this half term are: ‘All saints’, ‘Remembrance day’, ‘Solving problems’, ‘Anti-bullying, Advent’ and ‘The meaning of Christmas’.

Mathematics

Every day we will be doing practical problem solving, reasoning and numeracy activities. This will include encouraging the children to: recognise, say and use numbers to 10 and beyond in the correct order, copy and make their own repeating patterns, make sets of different objects and discuss the methods that they have used. We will also explore and talk about 2D shapes and their properties. Please take any opportunity to practise practical number recognition and counting with your child at home.

Understanding of the World

We love celebrating diversity, and learning about different cultures, festivals and traditions. We have lots of exciting events happening in the next few weeks such as Bonfire Night, Remembrance Sunday, Diwali and Hanukah.

The children have lots of opportunities to use computing to support their literacy and numeracy skills, as well as creative work. Children will learn through the use of fun educational websites such as topmarks, BusyThings, phonicsplay and cbbc.

As winter sets in, we will discuss the change in seasons and the weather during winter.

Expressive Arts and Design

Our topic for this half term is ‘Colour’, and we will be doing lots of fun and creative activities around colour and colour mixing. We will use different techniques to explore colour such as bubble painting and painting colour wheels. We will also explore colour though the use of prisms, kaleidoscopes and colour mixing paddles, and will experiment with colour through water play and experiments with skittles!

Physical Development

We will continue to support children to develop their gross motor skills outdoors, through activities such as riding bikes and scooters, skipping and ball games. We will also continue to provide learning opportunities for developing fine motor skills, such as threading, using scissors, playdough activities and much more.

Please remember to clearly label all your child’s uniform (especially jumpers and cardigans) with their name. Please support your child in learning to put their jumpers, cardigans and coats on, especially now as winter nears.

The children will be given lots of opportunities to write and draw, and we shall be encouraging them to form all the letters correctly. If you would like to help your child with letter formation please refer to the pre-school booklet you were given. Those children who are not quite ready for writing will practise fine motor control and mark making in a variety of media.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

We are very pleased with how well the children settled in to school. They have familiarised with the rules and routines of the classroom and have made lots of new friendships. We will continue to support the children in developing good relationships with their peers as well as staff. We will encourage the children to talk about how they feel and we will teach them strategies that they can use to deal with various feelings.

Children are provided with fresh fruit as a mid-morning snack and have access to water throughout the day. Please refill your child’s water bottle daily and make sure they remember to bring it to school.