Pre-School 2025 - 2026

Welcome to Pre-School Summer Term 2 2026 

Date for your diary for Reception 2026 starters: Pre-School Graduation Thursday 2nd July 2:15pm in the school hall.

If your child is graduating from Pre-School this term then please look out for the letter listing all the details about our leaver’s celebration performance. You will receive a paper copy of this. Please complete the slip attached and return to us asap. 

We will be starting our second Summer Term topic 'Pond life...who's egg is it?' please enjoy looking at the topic web in the file section below.

We have lots to look forward to this half-term including two weeks with our hatching eggs and caring for the small chicks as they hatch! Our Chick eggs arrive in Pre-School on Monday the 8th June, please complete the consent box on Scopay and your donation will gratefully be accepted.

• Routines, Reminders & Messages for Children starting Reception in September

  • Pre-School Graduation/Leavers Celebration - Thursday the 2nd of July at 2:15pm. You will receive further information about this via letter, all Pre-School children going up to Reception are invited to take part.
  • Graduation Photos- Look out for the letter and order form for your child's Graduation photo, we will be dressing each child in a hat and gown for the photo!
  • Move-Up Days - The children going to Reception in September will be spending some time with their new teachers this half-term.  They will visit on Wednesday 17^th of June, Thursday the 25th June and Wednesday 1^st of July.  All visits will take place during the school day
  • Book Bags- Last few weeks taking a new book home to read. Please look out for the memo when we will be requesting books back wk commencing the 7th of July and ensuring all news books are shared and returned to you.
  • Phase 1 Phonics- We will be learning about how to 'blend pure sounds' together to create each word we have segmented. We will learn how to blend them together to say the word. Each week I will add a list of words that we have been practising in our sessions, you will find this in your child's new phonics folder

Tapestry Learning Journey - If you are new to Tapestry as a family then please look out for an email with instructions on how to get started by the end of this week. If your child has an older sibling and you already have an Tapestry login then please reactivate your previous account, it will be accessible by the end of this week. If your child attends another setting we can share accounts with the other setting with your permission. If your child had a previous account at another setting then we can continue their Learning Journey by accessing a Key Code from the manager, please contact your previous setting and ask the manager to email Rode Heath Admin with the key code and we can then transfer the data to our Pre-School. As always, please let us know if you have any problems.

Week Commencing: Monday 15th of June 2026

'This week we will learn...'How to take care of a chick' 

Communication & Language:

This week we will discover a variety of new rhyming words and phrases through the story of 'Five Little Chicks' by Nancy Tafuri. We will practise saying these rhyming phrases containing words such as: Peep and eat, bug and shrug, squirm and worm, and so on. We will practise finishing the repetitive phrases of the story such as...'Peep, what can I eat?'. We will also enjoy learning about the life cycle of a chicken and the practise saying scientific names of each part. 

   Personal, Social & Emotional Development:

This week we will be practising working as a team and sharing our ideas. We will Listen to each other carefully and make plans to build a safe play area for our chicks and think about what food we can prepare to feed them. We will share rules about how to keep them safe and how to hold them carefully and to keep ourselves clean.

Physical Development:

This half-term we will practise moving to music as we get ready for our leaver’s performance called 'Croak'. Each week we will listen to a different piece of music that depicts how frogs move, bees and dragonflies soar and ladybirds dance.  We will sing new songs and learn new actions. We can't wait for you to see it! We will each learn actions to accompany songs and individual dances that correspond to our roles in the performance.

This week we will continue to produce our own phonics booklets starting with the most frequent sounds that we have been learning over the last few weeks: s,a,t,p,i,n. 

Literacy:

This week we will enjoy the story 'Five little Chicks'by Nancy Tafuri. We will focus on the information we collect from the story and what we have learned about what chicks need to eat and how to keep them healthy. We will learn how to write our names using handwriting pencils in our name writing booklets and start at the top left-hand side of the page. We will even try a new challenge-sounding out 'CVC' words, blending them and then tracing the shapes  of the graphemes next to the correct picture such as...ten, men, pen, how exciting! I'm very proud of everyone for all their amazing progress with mark making and name writing. Well done!

Phonics:

This week we will have lots of fun practising the sounds that letters make in our CVC words, so our game this week called 'happy chick' will use our favourite book 'Hen's Pens' to search for the pictures that rhyme. We will practise segmenting like this p-e-n then blend back together as we match the word to our picture cards. Please see the list of words provided for you to have fun with at home. Don't forget to pretend to be Metal Mike the robot to help you to 'sound talk' each word like this: h-e-n, then blend slowly like this.....h....e...n to 'stretch out' the word first before repeating once again, 'hen!'

Our rhyming words are: hen, pen, den, ten, men

  Mathematics:

This week we will explore counting out up to 5 objects from a larger group and counting to 5 in different ways. We will Label objects with numerals and Begin to make marks to represent quantities.

    Understanding the World:

This week we will ask questions about the chicks that have hatched at Pre-School and talk about the Brooder Box and how it will keep our chicks warm while the chick's grow, eat and drink. What changes can we see as they grow?

   Expressive Arts & Design:

This week we will enjoy comparing textures to discover the habitats of hens. We will make nests weaving with ribbon and string and add feathers to provide warmth and then enjoy getting sticky as we feel around in our messy tray challenge.

We know that the first few weeks at Pre-School can be a bit of a scary time, even for mums and dads! If you have any worries then please come and talk to us- mornings at the door can be a bit busy but we have more time to talk at the end of the day. Please email the office directly if you would like a phone call or a meeting.

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.