Create
This term our question is ‘is the outdoors the place to be?’ which is a fabulous, creative question for our create term!
This enables the children to learn outside more in the stunning sunny weather. The children enjoy this question as we explore outside, create new life (plants) and watch life grow (animals) as well as learning a wealth of new skills.
Outdoor stay and play
All provisions are set up outside for the children to explore with their parents (science link)
Little Bells Graduation
As our pre-school year children are getting ready to leave us before their transition into Reception, we celebrate by holding a small graduation for the children to say ‘well done’ and tell the children how proud we are of them.
New starter (September) stay and play
As a transition, the children who will be in Little Bells in September will be able to come into our class and play with their new friends and teachers. This is also a lovely chance for parents to meet other parents.
Class Trips
Walk to the farm
Enable the children to walk in their local area and observe different types of animals. Look at different types of farm animals young.
What animals are born in the spring?
What animals may we see at the farm with their babies?
Little Lancashire Village
An educational trip about how different shops work and how to be polite to others! This is a great opportunity for children to learn skills of sharing and taking turns.
Wow day
A day outside with different linked activities
Tracing on paper and materials
Mathematics
In Maths for this half term we are looking at subitising, patterns and then consolidating all the learning the children have accessed so far in our pre-school. Consolidation is critical at this age as this is what embeds all the foundations worth of knowledge, before developing it further after Reception.
Subitising can be a tricky aspect to learn as the concept is to know ‘how many’ of a particular object you can see, without counting (like a dice). The children take lots of time to learn this and we introduce this in various ways to help their understanding.
Understanding the world
This half term we will also be exploring patterns which fits beautifully with the life cycles and plant growth that we create in class. The children will explore simple A B patterns (flower, stick, flower, stick) alongside some more challenging patterns such as AAB/ABB/ABC patterns. The children should be able to guess what comes next in the pattern. After the busy year we have had, the children have lots of knowledge which will spend time consolidating and giving them the best start to the next year of learning that they will encounter.
This create term allows us to delve deep into learning aspects of Understanding The World. We spends lot of time, in our local environment, to grow different types of plants, to watch different animals grow, some from being a different type of animal such as caterpillars which we keep in class! We will go to our local farm, which our lovely, previous chair of governors, Mrs Brown lives on and see the baby farm animals. Mrs Brown helps us to learn the names of certain baby animals, and tells us how she cares for them. It is a very exciting area to develop in this last term, the children love the outdoors, which only grows more within this term.
Literacy
In this term, the children will read lots of different stories/books which will support our topic term question. The stories that the children will read are some such as:
– Jaspers Beanstalk
– Where does my food come from?
– Seasons
– Ben Plants a Butterfly Garden
– The Hungry Caterpillar
and many more!
This will help the children to develop their understanding on how things grow, and what things need to grow. This will cover not only plants, but animals too!
Physical Development
In this final term, we develop both fine motor skills through our artwork, alongside out gross motor skills as we use more balancing skills and spatial awareness. This term the children will learn lots of skills through gymnastics, ball games, fundamental skills and lastly, preparing the children for sports day! In this term the children will consolidate lots of skills as well as learning new things within our gymnastics unit. We will also be discussing our health and, how to care for ourselves too!
Personal, Social and emotional development
In this final term we see a difference between our N2 (pre-school year children) and our N1 children (our nursery children). The pre-school year children find their sense of responsibility, taking care of their own environment and things within it, as well as teaching our N1 children everything they know- from skills to manners! The pre-school year children get ready to transition into Reception and learn skills on how to manage change, and how this may feel. The nursey year children make new friendships, learn how to be respectful of others, their interests and their likes. This term consolidates personal development before large changes take place.
Expressive arts and design
This create term is a wonderful opportunity to continue our exploring and inquisitiveness into the area of expressive arts and design. The children have explore creatively outdoors such as painting with materials they find outside, tracing on different materials outdoors, water painting on the floor and chalk skills too. The children develop many creative skills in this term, using lots of natural materials as the children build small world creative scenes, as well as making patterns.
Communication and language
Communication and language is an area of learning that all children need to be achieving before the end of Reception to ensure they achieve the ‘Early Learning Goals’. This area is something the children develop every day, and every hour! As teachers, we model outstanding vocabulary and conversing skills, which support the children in their communicating skills. Alongside this, the children learn good communication skills from one another and their friends. The children will continue this development throughout this term as well as learning new vocabulary with new meanings!
Expressive Arts and Design
Expressive arts and design is used daily in Little Bells as it is what the children love to do the most! The children thoroughly enjoy painting, using chalk, gluing/sticking and cutting different items to create a wonderful creation. During our summer term the children will use different materials (outdoor materials) within their creations and use items from outside to make different colours. The children will also use larger outdoor equipment to create different types of constructions either individually or through the use of team-work and leadership skills. As a whole school, we will be learning a song and a dance to represent the performing side of music. This will be a fabulous opportunity to boost the children’s confidence and express themselves musically.