Pre-School 2024 - 2025

Welcome to Pre-School Summer Term 1 2025 

Date for your diary: Thursday 22nd of May is Pre-School's Sports afternoon...please return your attendance slip as soon as possible, thank you :)

We will be starting our first Summer Term topic 'Minibeasts and the natural world' please enjoy looking at the topic web in the file section below.

If you are able to offer half an hour in your afternoon to come and talk about a job or vocation, or to help in the Pre-School garden please speak to a member of the team... we would love to see you!

We have lots to look forward to this half-term including all our walks around the school grounds and our minibeast hunts taking place in the woods and preschool garden.

Routines, Reminders & Messages for Children starting Reception in September

• • Tapestry – If you have not yet sent any family photos or photos of special times for yourchild then we would love to share them in class. Please upload a photo of your child’s family as soon as you can, thanks so much! 
  • Book Bags – Please look out for your child's summer phonics folder which contains a new letter sound each week to practise saying and a segmenting and a rhyming game that you can have fun with at home. 
  • Reading for Pleasure' books - Your child will choose a 'Reading for Pleasure' every week.  These are lovely books for you to share with your child at home and are wonderful as a bedtime story or snuggling up on the sofa to read together. These books are also changed on your child's specific Book-Bag Day and again we have a limited supply, so would appreciate your support in ensuring they are returned on time to be available to be chosen by another child. 
  • Phase 1 Phonics- We will be learning about how to segment and blend letter sounds to create CVC words such as sun, run, bun and fun. We will start with simple rhyming words that you can practise saying and recognising together at home. We will continue to work on a new letter each week and you will receive a small poster with instructions on how to model the pure sound and practise new words at home together.
  • Lunches - You may change lunch option at any time for your child so if you wish to switch to a school lunch provided by our kitchen, please do not hesitate to let us know, an order form and menu can be obtained online or from the school office.  
  • Passwords - We require a password for every child. If you have not provided a password on your registration form, then please inform myself or Miss Moss at drop-off or pick-up time so that we can update our records. Also, if there are any changes to normal collection routines, please let us know on the day or contact the school office. 

Our Learning Journey

Week Commencing: Tuesday 22nd of April 2025

'This week we explore new signs of spring around us'

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Communication & Language:

This week we will talk lots about what we got up to over the school break, the Easter Bunny and the bluebells and blossom around us. This week we will also enjoy learning new words in relation to springtime such as bulb, shoot, petals and stems. We will enjoy exploring the repetitive phrases and the phrases that rhyme in the story 'Walking through the Jungle' by Julie Lancome. It will be exciting to add movements and sounds as we perform this story with a melody. What can I see? Is it a lion chasing after me?

   Personal, Social & Emotional Development:

This week we will also have lots of fun playing a game called ‘Easter Bunny Where are you?’. We will sit in a circle, the Easter Bunny will sit in the middle and close their eyes and listen carefully to try to guess who has said ‘Easter Bunny, where are you?’.

Physical Development:

This week we will enjoy following the movements through the story. We will wade through the jungle, hop, skip and stamp through the jungle and follow a rhythm as we do it. We will also be creating petal shapes with playdough to make flower pictures, using the cutters and playdough knives.

We have been so impressed with everyone's progress with their cutting skills, so using our dominant hand, we will try to hold the scissors using the correct finger positioning, thumb at the top and cut along a straight line. We will choose three pictures, to add a challenge the pictures have to then be placed linked to the correct starting sound of the word, i.e. s for snake, a for apple, and t for tap. Let's see if we can complete the challenge.

Literacy:

This week we will enjoy the delightful rhyming story of 'Walking Through the Jungle' by Julie Lancome. The children will really enjoy this funny and playful story that not only rhymes but adds little extra fun with opportunity for making individual animal sounds and acting out the story as if we were in the jungle. We will be focussing on moving across the page of a book from left to right and begin to discover how rhyming sounds work in words...can we repeat those rhyming phrases? We will begin to notice some familiar graphemes in the words in this story, focussing on the letter s, a and t, to begin matching pure sounds to its corresponding grapheme. Can we remember what action or sounds comes next in the story?

Phonics:

This week we will have lots of fun exploring how to make the pure sound 'u’: to make this sound correctly you need your mouth to open wide softly, place your tongue central and make the sound quickly with the air when you breath out, voices on in the throat area.  We will enjoy playing our I spy game together as we say many words such as under, umbrella, up and many more. We will start our new games this term using rhyming words to make a chain. Our words this week are; run, fun, sun, bun. Practise segmenting each word into its individual sounds s-u-n, then blend together ‘sun’. What other words can you think of to add to the rhyming chain?

  Mathematics:

This week we will revisit and consolidate sequencing numbers and copying a sequence of movements. We will practise a sequence using visual aids such as number cards, action photos and construction toys. We will enjoy recalling the sequence and trying our best to remember what comes next each time. Who can remember which item has been magically taken away under the magician’s cloth, let's play a memory game and see how many items you can remember?

    Understanding the World:

This week we will learn to recognise that the season has changed to Springtime. We will explore the fields and forest around us and look for many signs of spring including shoots and buds and leaves beginning to open. We will learn about blossom and what is special about certain trees that bear fruit. We will also begin our new sequence of learning about Minibeasts and their habitat, starting with spiders and their webs.

   Expressive Arts & Design:

We will paint a variety of different sized sponges and explore two particular colours, white and red to create a beautiful pink blossom picture. We will role play with jungle animals and small world minibeast creatures. We will practise weaving webs like Incy Wincy, with a variety of ribbon and wool.

Our door is always open, please contact us for help at any time.  At busy times, please telephone to leave a message or email and we will respond as soon as we can.