• Exploring sounds Around us…splash!
• The naughty bus adventures week 4 and 5
• Our First week together...welcome to Pre-School
• Week 3...off to the moon✨
• Week 2- Wow look what we can do!!!! Colour hunts 🌟👏
• Healthy eating, what’s for breakfast? 🥞🍓🍇
• Healthy eating and exploring cooking and freezing 🥶
• Sharing Boxes…how fantastic 💕🌟😊
• Autumn Term 2 -Autumn leaves and forest animals 🍁
• Autumn Term 2 - Let's explore night time...can you see the shadows?

Pre-School Autumn Term 2022  

To see our class photos please scroll up to the top of the page and press on the navy coloured tabs! Enjoy :)

Welcome back to  Pre-School, please scroll up to the main photo where you will see our navy tabs entitled 'week 2 etc... Click to open the tab and then you will be able to enjoy reading  about what we have all been getting up to and see our class photos.

My door is alway open, so please feel free to contact me if you require any help at any time. If it is a particulalary busy time, then please email me directly or call the school and leave a voicemail:

01270 314414

gburton@rodeheath.cheshire.sch.uk 

Each half-term I will publish a newsletter to let you know about the skills that the children be exploring within their play, of course the skills that they will be learning will progress through the year. 

Pre-School Termly Newsletter –Autumn 2 2022

Each week we will enjoy activities based on one of these themes:

Light and Dark, Nocturnal Animals, Hibernation, Birds and making feeders, Toys old and new, Christmas celebrations and Divali

We will be having lots of fun….

Personal Social and Emotional Development:

• Being a classroom helper and thinking about what we can do as a team to help each other
• Exploring other spaces such as the hall to sing and move with my friends
• Enjoying Relax Kids and autumn themed yoga to keep my body healthy
• Thinking about how to calm my mind and body using different music and art time

Communication and Language:

• Listening and joining in with our favourite Autumn time and Christmas songs and learning new ones too!
• Talking about and trying new words in our supermarket and toy shop and saying the name of signs that we know around us - Asda, Smyths etc
• Using puppets and props to act out simple stories such as Owl babies puppets and Room on the Broom cauldrons
• Repeating new vocabulary within our weekly small group reading time
• Talk about family and what you have been doing together- birthdays and bonfire, Divali and Christmas

Nursery Rhyme/Phonics songs focus: Hickory Dickory Dock, Horsey horsey Dont you stop, Ready Steady Stop, 

Physical Development:

• Scissor skills –practice holding scissors and cutting along lines with control
• Tracing patterns, manipulating tools of various sizes including spray bottles
• Celebrations and Autumn themed collage and art work and tweezer games
• Balance along a straight line and jump from hoop to hoop, throw a large ball into a hoop
• Playdough daily challenge time and Dough Gym

Phonics Phase 1: ‘Instrumental sounds’: We will explore rhythm and volume using percussion instruments both indoors and outdoors. Our activities will encourage listening skills, tuning in and descriminating sounds by pitch and tone. Children will play along with our Christmas songs that we will be learning to perform at our Christmas celebration performance.

• listen to different instruments play such as a piano, drum and bells, can they say when they can hear a different instrument playing?
• Practise saying new words in their school book 
• practise talking about celebrations and family time

Rhythm Time:  We will continue to explore gross motor movement’s using our sensory ribbons to accompany classical music that depicts autumn leaves falling, winter scenes and bonfire night. We will focus on tempo and loud and quiet sounds.

• • Literacy, story focus: We are practising sitting together and  sharing a book with a new book buddy. We will share books about Christmas time  and will take turns becoming a Book Keeper. We will continue to share fiction and non-fiction books during our group read sessions and focus our learning around reading the front cover and starting at the top of the page.

    Taking care of our book is important and so we can begin to look at illustrations with care and attention to detail and share books that are great to feel and touch, please continue to share your child's chosen book at home and bring in every week to change in their book bag.

    As a class we will explore books written by Jill Murphy such as Peace at last and Martin Waddell's Owl Babies. Children will enjoy Don't Hog the Hedge, This is the Bear and Room on the Broom. We will practise using new vocabulary from these stories in puppet play time and props, such shadow puppets and build nests with natural materials outside.

• Listen carefully and repeat new words in role play
• Read signs and labels in our toy shop and supermarket
• Form the capital letter at the beginning of their name

Mathematics: Each morning we will start with a variety of maths games such as, memory games, to encourage children to engage in sorting and arranging objects and categorising them. We will use instruments and counting songs to tap and count up to 3 and remember to stop.We will also enjoy number recall challenges both through adult led play and independent play based around colour knowledge and mastering the concept of each number in turn 1-5.

We will explore number and rhythm together in our ‘Wake up Shake Up’ time.  This is the combination of different exercise with our whole bodies sometimes accompanied by music. The children will enjoy copying and actions and reciting numbers to 5 and then 10 as they complete the exercises

Counting songs: I finger I thumb keep moving , 5 fat sausages, One, Two, buckle my shoe and Two little Dickie Birds sitting on a wall

You can help your child to:

• Explain that we can see numeral 2 in different ways - make a collection at home and take a photo of 2 shoes, 2 leaves, 2 pens etc 
• Find number 2 on signs and on print in the home
• Count how many buttons on the snowman card/christmas lights, using their fingers to touch as they say the next number name
• Decorate/colour a winter scarf with a repeating pattern, can your child complete the pattern with two colours?

Understanding the world explorations and investigation: This term we will investigate:Light and dark, shadows, fireworks and celebrations of light and Christmas time.

This term we will explore the theme of light and dark and looking at shiny and reflective materials. We will use torches to make shadows and explore shadow play with puppets that we will design and make. We will investigate our environment and how it changes and its effects on birds and animals, such as Hedgehogs and squirrels, and we will talk about hibernation and make houses for hedgehogs. We will make bird feeders and learn how to become a bird watcher. We will also compare toys from the past with modern toys and explore how to work remote controls. As part of exploring technology, we will design a toy on the laptop and print it out and we will programme Bee Bots and make them travel around.

This term is all about celebrating special events and sharing family cultural routines. We will explore the nativity story and think about the church community and what Christians do at this time of year. We will encourage the class to be thinking about others’ who may be less fortunate and how to be thankful and care for the things we have. 

You can help your child to develop their level of enquiry through:

• Collecting junk modelling to bring into class to design and build a robot or car week commencing 5th December 
• Choosing a battery-operated toy to use and talk about in class
• Look for squirrels burying nuts for winter and look out for hedgehogs at night time and help to care for them by placing food out as they get ready to hibernate 

Expressive Arts and Design: we will focus on learning new skills during role play, music and art play based activities

We are very excited about exploring using large and small paint brushes and layering colour, in our sessions involving learning about bright lights and colored lights and fireworks. We will compare these colours to the natural light of the night sky looking closely at Van Gogh's Starry Night, a famous artist from the past. We will create our own  impressions of 'Starry Night' and listen to  famous composers such as Debussy and Chopin, as we paint.

We will be dressing up as different characters from stories and acting out roles in our Christmas home area, supermarket and Toy shop. We will practise using new words that we have been learning and repeating familiar phrases from stories in our play.

You can help your child to: 

• talk about what they can see at night and the coloured lights that decorate our homes and streets at this time of year
• share news about the fireworks they may have seen or what they will be doing at Christmas time
• practise making shadows in the dark with their toys and torches and talk about how to work a remote controlled or  battery operated toy