Pre-School 2024 - 2025

Welcome to Pre-School Summer Term 1 2025 

Date for your diary: Thursday 22nd of May is Pre-School's Sports afternoon...please return your attendance slip as soon as possible, thank you :)

We will be starting our first Summer Term topic 'Minibeasts and the natural world' please enjoy looking at the topic web in the file section below.

If you are able to offer half an hour in your afternoon to come and talk about a job or vocation, or to help in the Pre-School garden please speak to a member of the team... we would love to see you!

We have lots to look forward to this half-term including all our walks around the school grounds and our minibeast hunts taking place in the woods and preschool garden.

Routines, Reminders & Messages for Children starting Reception in September

• • Tapestry – If you have not yet sent any family photos or photos of special times for yourchild then we would love to share them in class. Please upload a photo of your child’s family as soon as you can, thanks so much! 
  • Book Bags – Please look out for your child's summer phonics folder which contains a new letter sound each week to practise saying and a segmenting and a rhyming game that you can have fun with at home. 
  • Reading for Pleasure' books - Your child will choose a 'Reading for Pleasure' every week.  These are lovely books for you to share with your child at home and are wonderful as a bedtime story or snuggling up on the sofa to read together. These books are also changed on your child's specific Book-Bag Day and again we have a limited supply, so would appreciate your support in ensuring they are returned on time to be available to be chosen by another child. 
  • Phase 1 Phonics- We will be learning about how to segment and blend letter sounds to create CVC words such as sun, run, bun and fun. We will start with simple rhyming words that you can practise saying and recognising together at home. We will continue to work on a new letter each week and you will receive a small poster with instructions on how to model the pure sound and practise new words at home together.
  • Lunches - You may change lunch option at any time for your child so if you wish to switch to a school lunch provided by our kitchen, please do not hesitate to let us know, an order form and menu can be obtained online or from the school office.  
  • Passwords - We require a password for every child. If you have not provided a password on your registration form, then please inform myself or Miss Moss at drop-off or pick-up time so that we can update our records. Also, if there are any changes to normal collection routines, please let us know on the day or contact the school office. 

Our Learning Journey

Week Commencing: Monday 28th of April 2025

'This week we explore baby animals and minibeasts '

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Communication & Language:

This week we will learn new words in relation to sprintime and new growth. This includes the names of babies such as ducklings and foals. We will practise joining in with repetative phrases that rhyme in our story this week Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson.

   Personal, Social & Emotional Development:

This week we will also have lots of fun playing a game called ‘Easter Bunny Where are you?’. We will sit in a circle, the Easter Bunny will sit in the middle and close their eyes and listen carefully to try to guess who has said ‘Easter Bunny, where are you?’.

Physical Development:

This week we will enjoy following the movements through the story. We will enjoy challenges in games involving moving like different animals and different speeds and heights.

We have been so impressed with everyone's progress with their cutting skills, so using our dominant hand, we will try to hold the scissors using the correct finger positioning, thumb at the top and cut along a straight line. We will choose three pictures, to add a challenge the pictures have to then be placed linked to the correct starting sound of the word, i.e. s for snake, a for apple, and t for tap. Let's see if we can complete the challenge.

Literacy:

This week we will enjoy the delightful rhyming story of 'Monkey Puzzle' by Julia Donaldson. The children will really enjoy this funny and playful story that not only rhymes but adds little extra fun with opportunity for talking about the size and shape of animals and how they move differently. We will be focussing on moving across the page of a book from left to right and begin to discover how rhyming sounds work in words...can we repeat those rhyming phrases? We will begin to notice some familiar graphemes in the words in this story, focussing on the letter s, a and t, to begin matching pure sounds to its corresponding grapheme. Can we remember what action or sounds comes next in the story?

Phonics:

This week we will have lots of fun exploring how to make the pure sound 'r’: the roaring sound, tongue up at the back, voices on in the throat area.  We will enjoy playing our I spy game together as we say many words such as run, rat, rainbow and many more. We will start our new games this term using rhyming words to make a chain. Our words this week are; rat, hat, bat, cat. Practise segmenting each word into its individual sounds c-a-t, then blend together ‘sun’. What other words can you think of to add to the rhyming chain?

  Mathematics:

This week we will explore positional language. We will say on and under for different toys that move in our game. Also we can play in or out with different food in our picnic basket.

    Understanding the World:

This week we will learn about which animals will be having their babies on the farms We will also continue our sequence of learning about Minibeasts and their habitat, moving onto woodlice and damp and dark hiding places.

   Expressive Arts & Design:

We will role play with jungle animals and minibeast creatures and make baby animal collage books.

Our door is always open, please contact us for help at any time.  At busy times, please telephone to leave a message or email and we will respond as soon as we can.