EYFS
SPRING (1) 2022
Our topic this half term has been ‘Farmyard Fun’.
We have learnt all about farm animals, starting with our fantastic ‘Little Red Hen’ immersion day. Visiting the school chickens was a great way for the children to find out how to look after hens, under the expert guidance of Mr Barby. They learnt what the chickens needed to stay happy and healthy and that they laid over 2000 eggs last year! They all had the opportunity to stroke one of our lovely hens and ask any questions they wanted.
The children were thrilled when a farm visited Summerfield! They were told all about the animals and spent time with sheep, pigs, goats, a donkey, rabbits and dogs. What a fantastic hands-on experience we all had.
There was a lot of excitement on discovering the role play area had been converted into a Farm Shop. The children had great fun weighing, buying and bagging up real vegetables as well as working on the till, filling shopping baskets and writing shopping lists.
We have shared some lovely books, including The Little Red Hen, and learnt the whole story off by heart, which we shared with our families on Tapestry. We made bread, just like the Little Red Hen, and each child had the chance to knead the dough. There were lots of thumbs up when they got to eat their delicious creations! We even tried grinding our own wheat into flour using stones.
We’ve enjoyed reading Rosie’s Walk and learnt about positional language such as across, around, over and under. We went on a local walk and took our own cuddly Rosie on an adventure!
Our actions, teamed with our excellent recall skills and dedication, meant we were also able to recite the whole of The Three Little Pigs! We have used story maps this half term which has helped us learn our oral stories.
There have been so many creative opportunities throughout the term, allowing children to explore different media and colours, textures, tools and ideas. All children have had the opportunity to dress up in our role-play area, using their amazing imaginations whilst playing with their friends.
Our fine motor skills are constantly challenged with tweezers, scissors, pencils, threading, stickers and gems. Some of us are becoming expert jigsaw puzzle makers!
In Music, we continued learning classic songs, practising rhythms and actions, and are learning to sing in rounds with Year 1 – London’s Burning and Senwa Dedende – which we will share with everyone next term.
In Maths, we have loved exploring Numicon, matching the Numicon tiles to numeral cards, ordering Numicon from 1 upwards and making number bonds with different tiles. We have practised recognising numerals out of sequence and ordering numeral cards to 20. Using a 10 frame, we have represented numbers to 10 and have looked at the many different ways 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 can be represented e.g. fingers, Numicon, counters. We demonstrated our understanding of one more and one less, looked at time in relation to timing ourselves, our daily activities and days of the week.
In Science, we learnt all about animal habitats and different types of animal classifications – carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. We also discovered that ‘nocturnal’ animals come out at night.
We are making fantastic progress in Phonics, with many of us moving onto the Read, Write Inc Set 3 words! This is reflected in our wonderful reading and progression through our reading books.
Our Phonics also has a tremendous affect on our writing skills, allowing us to create words, phrases, sentences, labels and lists. We are working hard on remembering our capital letters, finger spaces and full stops too.
Using their growing communication skills, the children instructed Mrs Elgar on how to make a sandwich. The children found out how important clear and precise instructions are. They then paired up and made jam sandwiches themselves.
The children enjoy PE each week as well as fun dance sessions in class and lots of exercise outside each day, with provision set up to stretch and develop their skills.
What a fun-packed half term we have had and we can’t wait to start a new topic and to discover and learn more when we return!
