• Autumn 2023 Exploring sounds Around us
• Our First two weeks together...welcome to Pre-School 2023

Pre-School Autumn Term 2023  

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

Welcome to  Pre-School, please scroll up to the main photo where you will see our navy tabs. 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 1 2023

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

All about me, Who’s in my family? Our Body and self-portraits, Colours,

Let’s move our bodies, Investigating Our Senses,

Exploring the forest, Sounds Around

Baking, Harvest Time.

Personal Social and Emotional Development:

• Exploring activities, developing own preferences and participating in new experiences.
• Joining in with play alongside new friends and sharing toys.
• Adapting behaviour to new events or changes in routine

Communication and Language:

We will be having lots of fun….

• Listening and joining in with our favourite nursery rhymes and learning new ones too!
• Following simple instructions to play games and complete activities.
• Children will begin to understand 'what' questions, understand prepositions and some adjectives linked to the nursery rhymes, songs and stories we share.
• Children will learn new vocabulary within our weekly small group reading time
• Children will learn to talks about themselves, sharing their favourite things and ideas.

Physical Development:

• Scissor skills –practice holding scissors and cutting along lines with control
• Tracing patterns and manipulating tools of various sizes
• Nursery rhyme themed collage and art work and tweezer games
• Move around obstacles like nursery rhyme characters following positional language directions e.g. The Grand Old Duke of York
• Playdough daily challenge time and Dough Gym

Nursery Rhyme/Phonics songs focus:  Old Macdonald, Incy Wincy Spider, Rainbow, The grand old Duke of York, The wheels on the bus

Rhythm Time:  This term our children will celebrate the rhymes that they are most familiar with and will enjoy sharing their chosen traditional rhymes in small group singing time. We will also begin to explore simple gross motor movement’s using our new sensory ribbons to accompany natural and relaxing sounds and we will practise moving our arms up and down and all around.

Literacy: 

• We are practising sitting together and sharing new stories. At ‘Welcome Time’ we enjoy sharing a book with a new book buddy and will take turns becoming a Book Keeper.
•  We will begin to look at illustrations and share books that are great to feel and touch.
• As a class we will explore books written by Jill Murphy such as ‘Whatever Next’ and ‘Peace at last’ and will go on journeys with characters such as the ‘Naughty Bus’ ‘Supertato’ and the Little Red Hen. We will practise using new vocabulary form these stories in puppet play time and props such as hats, boxes, wellies etc.
• Enjoy looking at a book and seeing differnt pictures
• Pointing at things we can talk about
• making marks in sand and paint and with large chalks and pencils
• making playdough and using our hands to sqeeze and pinch

For year group expectations for English, please click here, scroll down and click on the overview. 

RECIEVING A BOOK BAG- This term we are very pleased to be providing your child with their very own book bag.

This book bag will be labelled with their name and the day of their book change. 

Each week your child will be given the opportunity to change a book that they have chosen from our little library at Pre-School.

Your child will also have the opportunity to share any news they have recorded in their news book, also to be kept in their book bag. We are very excited to hear any news that you may have about the weekend or an activity that your child has enjoyed at home. Please feel free to write as little or as much as required, maybe your child would like to draw a picture to talk about or share a photo of a pet or something they love from home.

We have a special News Board at school that we will post all our news on throughout the year, it is a lovely place for your child to show something that they can share with others.

New Vocabulary: We are very proud of the opportunities that we create at Pre-School to develop new language skills and nurture a sense of joy of reading books together.

On your child’s book bag day, they will also receive a little record of the new words that we have been using in our story times and it would be fantastic if you could practise them at home too!

Please look in the News and new Vocab book each week to see what story that we have been focussing on and the words we have used. Thank you for your support.

Phonics Phase 1: ‘Environmental Sounds’: We will explore both natural and man-made sounds, indoors and outdoors. Our activities will encourage listening skills and tuning in, during listening walks and exploring games involving guessing familiar and natural sounds. Children will design and make shakers and drums with natural materials of their choice to create their chosen sound. We will:

• tune in to sounds around them on a sound walk around the home or outdoors
• Practise saying new words in their school book 
• practise talking about the special things in their 'Share Box' answering 'what' style questions

You can help your child to:

• Listen carefully and join in with repetitive phrases in nursery rhymes
• Retell family events with a simple sequence when sharing news with us at news time and to retell/sing a familiar rhyme 

Mathematics: In order to find year group expectations for maths, please click here, scroll down and click on the overview. 

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 and we enjoy using balls and cones outside in games and explore different sizes.

• We will 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: 1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive, 5 currant Buns, 5 little speckled frogs, One potato, 5 Little Men in a flying saucer

You can help your child to:

• Practise recognising and saying the names of colours on colour hunts outdoors and notice light and dark shades of colours
• Finding just one, two or three of something
• Make patterns with natural materials that you have collected together –try a simple repeating pattern such as; stone then leaf, or stick then shell. We would love to see those patterns on your child’s learning journey or please bring them into Pre-School to share with us.

Understanding the world explorations and investigation: This term we will investigate:

• ‘The Senses’ and will carry out experiments tasting foods, smelling and guessing what it is and exploring different textures by touching with our hands and feet.
• We will also explore sound through making our own musical instruments and will go on walks to see where and how sound can be made. We will explore loud and quiet, fast and slow.
• We will have lots of fun exploring how we can move our bodies and enjoy taking risks during forest challenges and using equipment in our outdoor space.

This term is all about settling together and learning about each other. We will explore our family backgrounds and investigate:

• What we look like, our similarities and differences. We will learn about manners, respect and sharing.
• We will think about what ‘I Can Do’…to celebrate and share our individual talents and creative ideas, as we learn to become part of a team at Pre-School.
• We will all celebrate with our Wow cards and look at the Autumn festival Harvest time and give thanks for the food that we receive. We will look at how farmers grow and deliver food and how to make and bake bread, porridge and soup.

The Past and Present: Study photos of myself and my family and see how much I have changed. Talk about breakfast time and what I do at bedtime

People Cultures and Communities: : I know who lives with me and who is important to me, I know what I like to eat at home and what my house looks like

The Natural World: I can explore new environments and enoy talking about what I can see, touch,hear and smell.

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

• Collecting materials and comparing them in small building tasks or by making pictures and patterns
• Trying new fruits or vegetables and investigating photos of where they have come from...the ground, from a bush or tree, how are they harvested?
• We would love to see what you have been exploring together and what new things you have found out, please send any photos to share at our news time to:

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 colour with paint, chalks, foam and flour and will investigate how we may change colour too.
• Through great stories like Elma the elephant, The Rainbow fish and 'The Smeds and the Smoos' our children will start colour journeys and will experience shades of colour too
• We will use our hands and feet to paint with and look at texture and surfaces and use a variety of tools to explore types of marks and patterns that we can see around us.
• We will have lots of fun role playing with new items in our home corner and practise new interactions and vocabulary in our tea shop outside.
• We will be learning about our family and share photos, as we compare our features, special talents and think about what our faces look like.
• We will explore the colour of our hair, skin and facial features including the colour of our eyes. It will also be fantastic to think about families that have relatives that live in different countries or have parents that speak a different language.

You can help your child to: 

• Talk about their family and people/pets that are important to them 
• Share news about the weekend in their home diary 
• Make a special 'Sharing Box' to bring into school with a few items that have meaning to them, pictures of family and events. 

The expectations for science and the foundation subjects can be found by selecting the relevant heading from here.