Topic Overview
Nursery - Fun at the Farm!
Reception - Beatrix Potter
Understanding the World
Nursery will have a visit from animals about the time to learn about farm animals and their babies.
Reception will be exploring the past by comparing our lives to the life of Beatrix Potter. We will also look at her farm and how it is different from where we live. We will look at animals and explore life cycles. We are visiting Whitehouse Farm.
Key Vocabulary: Nursery
- Farm
- Farm Vehicles
- Names of farm animals and their babies
- Animals’ homes
Reception
- Past, long ago, before, after, artefact
- Nature, plants
- Habitat, life cycle, growing, change
- Countryside, city
Communication and Language
Nursery- We will encourage Nursery to explain their own thinking and ideas in small groups. We will also be describing story settings and characters and join in with repeated lines and phrases.
Reception- We will begin our Special Box session- listening and asking questions about our friend’s special items. We will be hot seating as Peter Rabbit and talking about the past as we look at how homes and items from homes have change since Beatrix Potter. We will be exploring wildlife too. Our new role play will be a vet’s, inspiring use of lots of new words too.,
English
Nursery We will continue to explore a range of texts including Nursery Rhymes and familiar stories to develop children’s phonological awareness through rhyme and alliteration. There are lots of opportunities throughout the day for sharing stories with the whole class and small groups to develop our love of reading. We will have a visit from a librarian. Reception-The children are now exploring Phase 4. There are no new sounds. We are working consonant blends and hearing the second consonant. We will have new tricky words. We will be reading books by Beatrix Potter, exploring her work as an author and illustrator. We will be reading captions and sentences and illustrating these. We will share our love of books with a visit to our local library. Writing Nursery- Through planned activities and free play, children will have opportunities to mark-make and give meaning to the marks they make. We will focus on pencil grip and control as well as providing opportunities for the children to write their own names. Reception- We will be exploring joining our sentences together and becoming independent writers ready for our transition into Year 1. We will be focusing on presentation and varying how we start our sentences. We will be applying our Phase 4 phonic knowledge in our writing too. We will become authors ourselves, exploring characters and settings and writing about these.
Phonics
Nursery children will continue the Little Wandle Phonics programme and play lots of games to support our oral blending.
Reception children will continue to learn new phonemes and graphemes following the Little Wandle Phonic programme. We are now learning Phase 4. This is when we learn to read CVCC, CCVC and CCVCC words including our digraphs and trigraphs from Phase 3.
Reception children will be practising our writing in Phonics- writing words and sentences from our phonics sessions.
At school we use the Little Wandle program and there is a great part of the website just for parents/carers: https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ Take a look at the following resources:
Maths
Nursery - In Maths we will be looking at some 3D shapes using language such as sides, corners, straight and flat. We will also be making comparisons between objects relating to size, length, weight and capacity. We will also create repeating patterns in addition to further developing our understanding of numbers.
Reception - Now we have a firm understanding of numbers to 10, we are ready to go to 20 and beyond. We will be looking at those tricky teen numbers and exploring how we make them and order them. We will be exploring how many now. We will be adding and subtracting using a range of objects to support us and beginning to count on.
How can I help?
Use Tapestry to share what your child is doing at home. We love to see their achievements and find out what they get up to!
Bring in any clean junk – no medicine boxes, please. We are very creative and love junk modelling!
Please make sure all clothes are named – including hats.
As the weather becomes sunnier, please apply sun cream to your child to ensure they are protected. Please send in a named sun hat for them to wear. Please ensure they continue to bring a coat, as the British weather can be unpredictable.
Reception are visiting Whitehouse farm on 18th May- if you are able to join us at the farm, please let us know (there may be some space on the bus too).
If you are able to walk with Reception to the library on 22nd April in the afternoon, please speak to a member of staff.
We are exploring objects from the past in Reception. If you have any artefacts that you would be happy to share, we would love to see them.
Computing
Nursery will explore our cause-and-effect area and discuss how we make toys works. We will be playing games inspired by the works of Beatrix Potter on CBeebies Playtime Island and CBeebies Get Creative. We will continue to practise logging in and finding apps.
Expressive Art and Design
This half term we will learn about transient art and we will be exploring the work of Andy Goldsworthy. We will make our own sculptures using natural materials.
Physical Development
Nursery will play lots of parachute games as well as ring games practicing our listening skills in PE sessions.
In Reception we will be practising our ball skills in PE as well as learning how to play different simple games. We will practise some of the skills we need for Sports day. We will also be spending time in Forest School
Reception will continue to develop our fine motor skills- focusing on correct letter formation.
PSHE and Religious Education
PSHE
Our big question this half term is… How can I make friends? How can I be kind?
Nursery – We will explore how we can make friends.
Reception – We will explore how we can be kind- to each other, to animals, to our world. We will also revisit making healthy choices about food and drink and understanding the importance of oral hygiene. We will have a visit from Brush in Reception. They will share all about teeth and how to keep them healthy.
Religious Education
We will continue to look at celebrations and how they are the same and different. We will explore religions in our community.
Our Values
Please Instagram us @archibald_1st if you see your child being #AFSCurious #AFSCaring #AFSCreative or #AFSCourageous
If you would like any further details about this half term's curriculum, please speak to your child's teacher.