On this page, you will get updates about your child's learning journey, and get snapshots on what our day looks like in Oak class. These pages will be updated termly.
The first few weeks of your child's learning journey, is all about settling them into their new environment, and getting used to school life. This term, we will be undertaking a series of baseline activities to gain an understanding of your child's starting points. Alongside this, we will be celebrating them, as individuals, whilst getting to know their interests, achievements and memories. A focus of our learning will be based on animals, as it is a familiar subject that most children enjoy; this will be explored through stories and play.
Alongside our English baseline activities, we will be exploring a range of core texts, such as the Elmer series by David McKee, 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' and 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'.
Whilst exploring these texts, through play, discussion and art, we will be building up the pupils familiarity of stories, so they can retell plots in some detail, and make relevant predictions.
As we crept closer to Halloween, we shared 'Pumpkin Soup', by Helen Cooper, as well as Julia Donaldson's 'Room on the Broom'. We used these core texts to enhance our rhyming knowledge, and applied our phonics knowledge by identifying the first sounds of words.
After Halloween, we continued with Helen Cooper's sequel to 'Pumpkin Soup', and used characters from 'Funnybones' to encourage conversations about the children's experiences in the half term.
As the term progresses, our stories will follow the genre of 'Food and Celebrations'. A part of our English this term also links to our Religious Enquiry, as we learn about the festival of lights, Diwali. The story of Rama and Sita will help us to understand this important celebration. In addition to this, the 'Christmas Story' will form the basis of our special nativity production.
The celebration of birthdays will be a focus for Oak class, alongside the story 'If a T-Rex Crashes Your Birthday Party', Birthdays, parties and celebrations will inform our role play and writing!
As we move into December, we will be reading classic stories from the 'Christmas Collection', to once again promote conversations about how we celebrate Christmas as a community, and in our families. We finish off the term with the familiar book 'Stick Man', where we help the children to retell familiar stories in detail.
During this term, the children in Oak Class get to showcase their pre- existing story knowledge during our enquiry of 'Traditional Tales'. We share family favourites, such as 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' and 'The Gingerbread Man'. The stories we share at the end of the day are closely linked to familiar characters, which offer us alternative plots of the well- known tales.
Our learning environment builds on our understanding of these traditional tales, and through character role play and props, our comprehension knowledge will continue to grow.
These stories guide our writing, as we begin applying our phonics knowledge more independently - activities include labelling characters and writing simple sentences.
To finish off the term, we continue exploring the theme of fairy tales with Julia Donaldson's 'Zog' collection, where we take a trip to Dragon School!
With Spring around the corner, Oak class will be sharing a range of stories and poems linked to seasonal change, plant growth and life cycles. The focus in our Literacy will be recording the signs of Spring, such as flowering seeds and the growth of our very own bean seeds.
This term, we will be exploring a range of non- fictions texts linked to Spring and plant growth, as well as the traditional tales 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and 'The Enormous Turnip'. We are hoping that the weather will brighten (and get warmer) so we can share our diverse range of texts in our outdoor reading area.
As the term draws to an end, we will be thinking about Easter - and the Easter bunny may come and visit Oak class, but with a phonics and reading inspired egg hunt!
EYFS Maths Long Term Plan 24 25
In Term 1, we will be undertaking a range of baseline activities, such as numeral recognition, 1:1 correspondence with counting and creating patterns. These activities are designed to best support your child in their maths learning. All activities will be engaging, hands- on and practical.
We started the term with some 'trick or treating' maths! We used paper sweets to match an amount to a numeral. As the term progresses, we will be continuing to build on our number knowledge, by exploring practical word problems, and thinking about the composition of numbers to 5. With our celebration enquiry, we will also be thinking about our own ages, whilst learning how to state one more and one less of numbers.
This term Oak Class will be continuing to build on our understanding of the composition of numbers, and starting to learn bonds to 5.
We will also be introduced to the mathematical concept of 'estimating' (or a 'sensible guess'); this knowledge will be applied in our child initiated, when solving and discussing maths problems.
We have spent the last few terms deepening our understanding of the bonds to 5, and it is now time to think about how 10 can be made! Our problem solving will move towards using the symbols of addition and subtraction (+/ -/ =), and how number bonds look in number sentences.
Within our patterns unit, we will be revisiting the concept repeating patterns, and learning how to continue sequences with varied rules.
In line with our enquiry of 'Spring Growth', we will be bringing a garden centre to Oak class! We will be taking on roles such as customer and shopkeeper, which will enhance our everyday language related to money.
Our main focus is getting to know the children; their families, all about their holidays and favourite memories. This allows us to start exploring the concept of 'Growing Up', and start thinking about how we have changed. Alongside this, we will be discussing where children have been, and finding them on a map of our big, vast world. As well as different places, we will also be exploring our local community, and what it has to offer.
As the seasons change, we will be exploring and playing with lots of different seasonal objects, including beautifully coloured leaves, shiny conkers and different sized acorns!
With out enquiry of 'Food and Celebrations', we will be learning about different religious stories, and the celebrations that come with it. Oak class spend two weeks at the beginning of term, exploring Diwali. We focus on key information, such as how the festival is celebrated with fireworks, lights, special foods, and sharing gifts with friends and family. We compare how some may celebrate Diwali, to how we celebrate special times at home. Everything that we learn in class, is reinforced through role play, story telling, and craft.
TERM 3
This term was kicked off with our whole school STEM week, whereby Oak Class used the poor Gingerbread Man in different experiments - sadly, he did not survive the river crossing!
In the peak of Winter, we will be looking at elements of seasonal change, and exploring natural phenomenon such as frost and ice.
At the end of term, Oak class will be once again thinking about amenities in our local community, and the jobs we have within in too.
Our focus this term will be on seasonal change, and plant growth. We begin the term by thinking about Spring, and what signs we can spot. This is linked to the wonderful story, 'When Will it be Spring?'
The children will also be planting their own bean seeds, which we will keep a close eye on as the term progresses. Within this, we will be learning about what plants need, and the different parts of a plant, as well as exploring the basic parts of trees too.
As we get closer to Easter, we will explore the life cycle of a chick and how they hatch from an egg.
Our rich environment offers many different arty activities. This term, we have been creating collages of the character Elmer, drawing maps, and doing lots of painting and colour mixing.
The concept of colour mixing is explored further in the children's art lessons, with Mrs Clarkson.
With celebrations and special times in mind, our art provision this term will be offering the children many mixed media opportunities. This includes, drawing making our own rangoli patterns with chalk, glittery fireworks pictures and making cards for our friends and family.
Our learning environment offers lots of mixed media, whereby the children are exposed to many creative activities linked to our enquiry of 'Traditional Tales'.
Our beautiful art work has been displayed in Shepway library. Please follow the link to look at our 'Ugly Duckling' masterpieces!
This term, our environment will lend itself to he bright colours of Spring. The children will have the opportunity to spend time doing drawings of bouquets, making flower pictures using mixed materials, and doing observational drawings of our own bean seed.