Dear Parents/Carers,
A huge warm welcome to our St Eanswythe’s family. We have been waiting very patiently to get this new school year started and welcome our Ducklings into school. This summer we have been incredibly busy transforming our classroom into an exciting place for our children to explore. We hope you have had a wonderful summer, filled with magical memories and much excitement about their new learning adventure.
To begin the new school year, the Ducklings will be exploring ‘All About Me’ as their first topic. Not only this but as it is their first term in school, a huge focus will be spent on a happy transition. Our priority is to make this as successful as possible. We want children to be happy and confident coming into school and as this is full of new things we will work at their pace.
We will be helping the children to become familiar with our classroom and the different resources.
We will be supporting children to create bonds and relationships with the staff and the children in their class.
The children will also be getting used to new routines and schedules. As you can imagine the first few weeks will be full of change and we will support your child however we can but we are also here for you too.
If you have any questions (no matter how small you think they are) or concerns then do please let us know. You can ring the school or send in an email anytime and we will get back to you as soon as we can. We will also be on the door at drop off and pick up. This is always a busy time as the children have our sole focus, so we would ask for your patience whilst we ensure they are either safely in school or with their parents/carers.
The Early Years curriculum is split into several key areas. Below we will map out what your child will be learning in each of these during their first term. You can use these to talk to them at home and ask questions about what they have been doing – be prepared for them to answer “What have you done at school today?” with “I can’t remember!” and this is ok. We will be also be aiming to blog at least once per week to also help you know what they have been up to.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development (managing self, building relationships and self-regulation)
As we start a new school year we spend the first few days creating our class rules – these are known as Golden Rules. The children are actively encouraged to come up with the rules as this gives them more ownership over what behaviours are expected in class and what the good choices are. This term will also be about relationships and building these with new staff and new peers. We will be playing lots of ‘Getting to Know You’ games and singing songs as a whole class, that will include their names, to help children become more familiar with the names of others. This is a term full of change and this can be a very emotional time. We will be exploring different feelings and how they make us feel and how we can show them to others. We will be using lots of storybooks to help us explore feelings, including The Colour Monster.
Literacy (reading, comprehension and writing)
During this term we will start to send home reading books. The children will bring home a book to share from our class book corner and a ‘reading book’. At the moment the children will bring home a book from the book corner that you can enjoy and share together. You can ask if they enjoyed the book, why, questions about what is happening in the pictures or how they would feel if they were one of the characters in the book. These books can be returned when you have finished and changed for a new one. You will also receive a home/school contact book that can be used to record what book they have brought home, if they enjoyed the book and also any messages that you would like us to know. These can both be kept in their school book bag, which will need to be brought into school every day.
This term will also see us start our phonics learning. In school we use Read Write Inc as our phonic scheme. There will be a useful parent workshop run later in the term to help you become familiar with this scheme and to help support your child with this part of their learning. We will keep you updated with the date as it is confirmed.
Throughout our environment the children will find writing tools and equipment everywhere they look: clipboards and planning sheets in our construction zone, recipe notebooks and calendar plans in our home corner and portable writing boxes with post-it notes and stationary a plenty. All the adults in our setting will be helping to promote a love for writing through play opportunities. We will be providing plenty of opportunities for children to become name writers, note takers and story writers.
Maths (numbers numerical pattern, shape, space and measure)
The majority of our number work will focus on sorting, matching and counting activities. We will be having a short Maths input session each day, focusing on these particular areas and then the children will be showcasing their learning in our environment. You can further support this at home by, for example: counting cars as you drive along, getting different amount so fruit at the shops, sorting out pairs of socks. Try spotting numbers when you are coming to school on car number plates or house numbers. We will also be exploring patterns – number and shape patterns, patterns around us – in school, in the natural world, in the environment, word and letter patterns and sound patterns.
Understanding of the World (past and present, people, culture and communities and the natural world)
This term the children will be spending lots of time getting to know each other and finding out that each of us is unique and special. The children will be encouraged to share who is in their family, their cultures and beliefs and where in the world their family has connections to. If you have any photos that you would be happy to let us use for the term then please do send them in. We would love to put together an ‘Our Family’ display.
We will also be looking at Folkestone, where we live and what we can do here. This will see us getting out and about in our local area, gathering natural objects that we can find as the season changes like acorns, conkers and pine cones. If you go on a walk and find any of these please feel free to send them into school and we will add them to our areas.
Physical Development (gross and fine motor skills)
Throughout the day, the children will have access to our outdoor environment which will include the bikes, trikes and scooters on the bottom playground, the trim trail/climbing frame on the top playground and our own fenced off area where they can use the large scale construction to build, climb and jump. These types of activities will help the children to develop their gross motor skills. Inside the classroom the children will have access to resources like scissors, pencils, crayons, chalk, play-doh, tweezers and puzzles to help develop their fine motor skills.
In addition to all that the classroom will provide, the children will have a designated PE session with our sports coach on Fridays. For the first term the sports coach will be introducing the children to PE, taking on a new skills each week.
Expressive Arts and Design (creating with materials and being imaginative and expressive)
In our classroom we have a well-stocked creative area, where the children have free access to let their imaginations run free. On Fridays, the children will have their own Art lesson with Miss Hayward. This term she will be running sessions to allow the children to explore: Colour.
Imagination does not stop there the children will be using their imagination throughout the environment with imaginative play, storytelling and role play. This year the summerhouse has been converted into ‘Our Home’ and we are all really excited to see it come alive.
This year we also have a Curious Corner, where the staff will place curious things. We will watch as the children engage with the curious things and encourage the children to question what it could be used for, if they have seen it somewhere before or what it could be used for. If you have anything that you think will be inspiringly curious please speak to one of our team.
Reading
Please share the books that are sent home with your child because the more they are encouraged to share books the better reader they will become.
Reading is a necessary, lifelong skill.
Being read to provides comfort for children, improving their concentration and focus.
Being read to gives children knowledge to understand and talk about the world around them.
When children understand what is being read this helps them understand how words, phrases and sentences are put together.
Using and sharing fiction and non-fiction books, poems, rhymes and songs builds children’s understanding and use of language.
REMINDERS:
Please make sure that everything your child brings to school is labelled with their name. This can be with a name stamp, sticker or simply written in pen. If something becomes misplaced or lost, if it is named it does have a higher chance of coming back.
P.E is on a Friday and the children must come into school wearing full PE kit this day.
Please remember to let us know who your child is going home with if there is a change to the normal routine. This can be done at the front door, by email or a phone call to the school office.
Hopefully this will give you an idea of what we will be doing this term. Our main aim, as well as learning, is to have lots of fun and to make coming to school something the children want to do!
Thank you for your support and you are most welcome to come and ask about anything that we do. We are so excited to begin this year and cannot wait to see where it takes us!
The Ducklings Team
