Personal, social and emotional development

We have introduced the zones of regulation images to the children. This gives them an opportunity to identify how they may be feeling and they can move their photo to that zone. There are ideas for each zone which can support children in helping to regulate in that moment. Adults are able to model language to the children and validate their feelings.

We have also shared information with parents about emotion coaching.

Communication, Language and Literacy

Our weekly story focus has continued and the texts have been carefully chosen to link with our themes this term; Life Cycles, Growing & Changing and Insects.

We have been developing children’s phonological awareness and explored lots of Phase 1 phonics activities. Children have been tapping syllables in words, identifying instrumental and environmental sounds. They have also focused on hearing the initial sound in words, hearing when words rhyme and oral blending and segmenting. We have continued to learn new poems and rhymes too.

Ellie’s attention therapy sessions have also linked to developing children’s phonological awareness.

A potential wasp nest in our garden inspired lots of communication, problem solving, children listening and sharing their ideas and mark-making. They decided to make some signs to warn people about the danger.

Physical Development

This term as we start to prepare some children for moving into Reception, we have worked hard on developing their independence with changing shoes, putting on their own coats and wet weather suits.

We have also explored healthy eating, sorting different foods and thinking about why foods are healthy or unhealthy. The children were very knowledgeable about this. We linked this to our teeth brushing time each day, reinforcing links in their learning and self-care routines.

Mr Bolton has introduced us to using a range of equipment this term. Children have used racquets to control balls and played target games such as archery.

Mathematical Development

We have continued to develop our subitising skills and use this strategy in as many different everyday real life opportunities as we can. For example, we found out if there would be enough seeds for everyone to plant a sunflower and used five frames to check. At snack time, we used cubes to show if we are drinking milk or water and this has enabled us to learn about ‘one more.’ Here the children can subitise the cubes and respond to questioning e.g. ‘four people have had milk, if one more chooses milk, what will that make?’

We tasted fruits from the hungry caterpillar story and recorded our favourites on five frames to compare which was the most popular.

We have explored different representations such as dotty cards and five frames and worked on matching objects to these amounts.

Junk modelling provided an opportunity to look carefully at the shapes of the boxes and to think carefully about which ones we needed for our models, it also involved language related to size.

We noticed the differences in the sizes of our plants and introduced comparative language of tall and short to describe them. We used bricks to measure and compare them too.

Understanding the world

This term we have looked at different seeds, noticing similarities and differences. This has linked to our texts such as Jasper’s Beanstalk and Big Yellow Sunflower. The children have planted seeds and looked after them, observing how they grow and change.

We have visited the woodland each week and this has given us opportunities to explore the habitats of mini-beasts and find out more about them.

Our tadpoles turned into froglets and we observed the differences between them. We watched as the froglets could climb up the tank and onto the rocks.

Our weekly texts included The Teeny Weeny Tadpole and The Very Hungry Caterpillar which helped us learn more about life cycles.

Expressive Arts and Design

We have been very creative this term. We have explored clay as a new malleable material. We have tried techniques in art such as symmetrical butterfly prints, bubble prints and colour mixing.

In our movement sessions we have thought about the ways creatures such as spiders and frogs move and have developed our own ideas.

We have learnt new songs to reinforce our learning, such as ‘There’s a tiny caterpillar on a leaf.’