Reception 2024 - 2025

Welcome to Reception!

  Spring Term

This class page is where you will find information about what your child will be learning in the term ahead. Please see below for some of our planned curriculum and learning opportunities for this term across the 7 areas of the EYFS Framework, as well as our RE and You, Me, Everyone programmes.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) at Ursuline offers your child numerous opportunities to develop in the following prime areas of learning:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development

as well as another four areas of learning:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Expressive Arts and Design
• Understanding the World                                                                                       

• RE

  Our focus this half term will be on stories about Jesus, such as ‘The wise men bringing gifts to worship him’, ‘Jesus’ presentation in the Temple’ and ‘Jesus welcoming the children’. We will be listening to these stories and exploring what they mean to us. Through creative activities such as arts and crafts  and role play we will explore some of the themes from these stories. We will then reflect how we can live out this learning in our daily lives. 

  After half term we learn about how Lent is a time to grow in love. We listen to more stories about Jesus and Holy Week. We explore some traditions around celebrating Easter. 

• Communication and Language

We will continue to have lots of opportunity to talk and to understand how to listen carefully to each other through our continuous provision activities, where staff will be engaging in purposeful conversations with children in their play. We will be modelling back and forth exchanges using full sentences and encouraging the use of new vocabulary taught through our quality texts. 

• Personal Social and Emotional Development

We will encourage respectful relationships with peers and adults where children will learn to begin to self and co regulate using our emotions check in and sensory box. We will encourage the children to identify and link book characters' emotions with their own to help with this. We will help the children to develop independent use of buttons, zips, shoes, coats etc and teach them strategies to look after their belongings. We will talk about the different factors that support their overall health and well-being, such as being active, spending time outdoors, eating healthily and having a good sleep routine as well as keeping ourselves safe. 

        You, Me, Everyone

 Our bespoke You, Me, Everyone programme offers many opportunities to discuss ways in which the children can develop personally,socially and emotionally. This term we will be continuing to explore our friendships and our feelings as we celebrate our similarities and differences as we grow.  We look to role models in our lives including how Jesus loves us and is a role model for us to copy in how to love one another. 

•   Physical Development   

PE lessons will continue to be on a Thursday (children to come into school dressed in their PE kits please) and this term will focus on Dance. We will explore actions to fit nursery rhymes, listen carefully to music and develop our understanding of moving in time to a beat. We will create our own simple dance routine practicing, improving and performing together and the children will have lots of opportunities to take ownership of this learning in provision.

We are continually developing our gross and fine motor skills in lots of ways in Reception, using play dough, threading, colouring and writing on a large and small scale as well as rolling tyres, carrying buckets of mud, water, sand and crates in our continuous provision. The range of continuous provision activities is so important in building their hand and eye coordination, core strength, stability and balance, needed for future learning.

Literacy

Our quality texts form the basis of our well-planned curriculum. 

Our book choices this term relate to our themes:

Once upon a time...  

'There is No Dragon in this story'

In this story our Dragon is joined by a host of very familiar characters. We will explore their own stories alongside our main text, reading, sharing and acting out different versions of traditional tales. If you've a favourite at home we'd love to share it in class!

Our focus for writing in the spring term is on labelling using CVC words and begining to write short captions and sentences.

e.g.' I am sad.', 'It is red.'

We will be encouraging the children to make labels for all their creations. 

Growing and Changing- Spring...      The Woolly Bear Caterpillar and Things With Wings

A fiction and a non-fiction text help us find out about changes and growth. These texts inspire us to deepen our awareness and understanding of the natural world. They also serve as foci for observations of spring flowers, caterpillars and frogspawn/tadpoles, for us to then paint, draw and create with different media.

Phonics

The children continue to have daily phonics sessions, through our Read Write Inc phonics programme. We will continue to track the children closely and assess them every half term.

Fred the frog helps us learn new sounds and blend them into words.

Reading Books

The children will continue to bring home a class library book of their choice for reading together with pleasure.

They will also bring home a phonics text. This may be a 'sound blending' book to support their blending. A 'Ditty sheet' or 'Red Ditty Book' which they will have read in class that week for consolidation. And when appropriate a further 'book bag book' of the same level to support their prediction skills and enjoyment of reading for themselves

 Books will be sent home in book bags on a Thursday to be returned to school on a Monday. Thank you for your support in helping your child with their reading at home, please ask if you need any clarification or support with home reading,  

Maths

Our daily maths input this term extends the children's understanding of numbers from 5 up to10 by focusing on each number in depth.

We will use 10 frames, manipulatives from our environment (pebbles, pencils, sticks, cubes, buttons and anything else that can be moved!) to support a solid understanding of number to 10. This includes being able to spot a number without needing to count each item individually (subitising) within 5 and looking for patterns within larger numbers to help with accurate and speedy counting.

The children play a range of simple games to support their understanding, first with an adult and then with a friend during continuous provision.

There are lots of opportunities within continuous provision for children to explore shape, space and measure.

• Understanding the world

 In spring term we examine seasonal change in the natural world from the depths of winter into the first signs of spring. Opportunities to explore the weather are welcomed with frosty/snowy days offering lots of fun learning experiences. 

Other cultures are explored through stories and video clips and first hand experiences such as handling artefacts and tasting different foods, Chinese new year offers one such opportunity, linking with our dance topic in PE as we watch and have a go at a chinese lion dance.

Our key texts,' The Woolly Bear Caterpillar' and 'Things with Wings'  prompt us to think about the changes from winter into spring and the life cycles of animals. Hopefully we will be able to study these changes first hand if the frogs lay eggs in Mrs Bryce's pond again this year!

We will be practising simple greetings in Spanish, including our 'hola' and 'adios' songs, numbers 1-5 and some colours. We also compare how Christmas is celebrated in Spain with a particular focus on Three Kings Day (Los Reyes Magos), which is an important part of Christmas in Spain.

• Expressive Arts and Design

More storybook dragons this term and chinese dragons, as well as many characters and settings from traditional tales will give the children plenty of inspiration. They will use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques to create pictures, props and models and begin to explain the process we have used. Our imagintions will also be stimulated as we develop our Role Play in many ways, from re-enacting familiar situations to retelling stories, using what we know to express our ideas. 

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Music

We will be following the Kapow scheme of work. The nursery rhyme and traditional tales theme fits nicely with our texts themes to encourage the children to take what they have learned into their play as they access the instruments out on our performance area and in their role play.

We will also be learning to sing hymns in class in our prayer and liturgy and assemblies as we join KS1 or the whole school to worship through music and song.

A few reminders:

• Please send in a water bottle for your child, filled with water each day.
• We also ask that every item of clothing and footwear is labelled with your child's name.

Dates for your diary:

• Family Fun Maths - Fri 24th Jan 9-9.30
• Parents'/ Carers' evenings - 11th /12th February - (you will be invited by e-mail to book via 'school cloud' nearer the time)
• Finish at usual time for half term on Thursday 13th February (14th INSET)
• Return to school - Monday 24th Feb
• Finish for Easter holidays - Friday 4th April - 2pm

If you need to speak to your child's teacher, please approach us on the playground and we can arrange a time. We would ask that you kindly wait until we have seen all of the children safely to their parent or carer before speaking to your teacher and we will be happy to chat. Alternatively, you may wish to ring the school office.

We are looking forward to a super term of learning ahead of us.

Reception team

Mrs Bryce, Mrs O'Brien (Class RB)

Mrs Long, Mrs Bray (Class RL) 

Mrs Walmsley (mornings RB,RL)