EYFS at Woodland Grange

• We encourage children to be curious and imaginative. 
• We teach them to ask and answer questions — find things out & explain to others. 
• We want our children to be aware of the world around them.
• We encourage them to be independent.

General Information:

Reading at home:

Please could we remind all families just how important practising phonetic sounds and reading, at home, is. Those children that read and share books at home regularly are progressing so well. They are super confident and are beginning to segment and blend independently. We all understand how busy life can get, but 5 minutes daily will make a huge difference. Thank you so much to those that read regularly and write in the purple reading record. If you would like any support or suggestions regarding reading and/or phonics at home, then please let us know. 

Forest School and outdoor learning is a big feature at our school. This helps the children develop their physical skills and core strength, which are vital for everyday life at school and beyond. It also provides many open-ended learning opportunities, which in turn creates team work, problem-solving and allows the imagination to flourish.

It will soon be Shooting Stars' turn for Forest School (Mrs Johnson's class). 

Dinner - Here are the menus for autumn 2024 - Woodland Grange Primary School - School Dinners (woodlandwideweb.org.uk)

Week beginning : 2/12/2024

This week's learning:

Focus text: The Nativity 

Some of the things the children can look forward to seeing in the classroom this week:

Construction area - vehicles and wooden blocks for constructing roads and bridges. 

Finger Gym - to build up the children's muscle strength and memory and develop their dexterity and fine motor skills. The classroom has a finger gym - the activities in this area will change regularly and include activities to help build children's motor skills and confidence - all of which should help the kids to improve pencil grip and handwriting. This week children will be using their fine motor-skills to do some fun threading. 

Role-play area - School in a school - the children are enjoying 'playing schools' - role-playing as teachers and pupils. This week, we will continue with the role-play area as the popular mini-school. 

Writing area - Picture Prompts - We took photographs of the children, during their nativity rehearsals last week. The children will be using these photos as inspiration for some writing. 

Creative area - Amazing artists - the children are the artists and can use water colours to paint whatever they wish too.

Reading area - familiar stories, sharing and retelling stories. The children are really enjoying sharing and exploring a range of different texts. It is a pleasure to see a joy of reading! 

Maths area - Stamploine patterns. Fun and colourful maths this week.  

Water - camel car wash. 

Tough spot - The World of the Nativity - Beautiful wooden figures for children to choose from. 

Our carpet sessions will include English sessions, maths sessions and phonics sessions.

Phonics sessions will be daily (please see below for more details). 

Phonics

Our Rocket Phonics phonic sessions continue to happen once a day, 5 times a week. 

We focussed on the sounds ll (digraph) and ss (digraph) last week. This week we will be focusing on double letters, two syllable words and the common exception word 'into'. Why not practise these initial sounds at home with your children? 

 

Maths

This week, the focus is on counting, ordinality and cardinality. This week, the children will continue to engage in activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. The children will revisit the concept of 1:1 correspondence by making sure that they match collections of objects to their representations. They will develop their understanding of the concept of cardinality – the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether – and begin to apply this concept to count more abstract things, such as claps and jump. 

Other areas of the curriculum....

Music - Lots of singing - we will be continuing to learn and rehearse our Christmas nativity songs - exciting times! Lots of you know every word to all of the schools. 

RE - We have had some lovely discussion about the different religions of the world and this will continue. It is so nice when children share their own experiences with their class. 

PSED - We will continue to think about our feelings and emotions. Some children have shown real maturity in how and what they discuss in some of our circle time sessions. Also, the children have a check-in where they can choose to put their picture on the emotion that best fits what they are feeling at that time. 

PE - The children will do a PE lesson on a Friday afternoon (this may change on occasions now - due to the Christmas Nativity rehearsals). 

Do not worry about PE kits (yet) - we will communicate this with you when needed (to commence after the Christmas holidays). For now, the children will be barefoot and in their uniforms (indoors). 

Please make sure that all jewellery is removed, including religious bracelets. Could we please ask that all earrings are removed for our Friday lessons? This is really important for safety. Thank you to the vast majority of parents/carers that continue to do this. 

We are focussing on fundamental movements this half-term as the theme continues to be - 'An Introduction to PE'.

 

Please see the family area of the Get Set 4 PE website. We use this scheme at school, so why not see what they suggest for some fun activities at home - Get Set 4 PE - Resource Bank (getset4education.co.uk)

Christmas Decorations Morning - this Friday - 29/11/24