Reception 2024 - 2025

EYFS (Foundation Stage 2) 2024 - 2025

Miss Thwaite

Teaching Assistants: Mrs Halpin (Monday and Tuesday), Mrs Christian (Wednesday - Friday)

Autumn Term 2024

Hello and welcome to autumn term at St Mary of the Angels Foundation Stage 2 (EYFS). We are really looking forward to getting to know your lovely children and helping them settle in at school this term. In the EYFS your child will learn through a mixture of adult led and child-initiated activities. Play is vital for children's development and they will learn and develop skills and knowledge in our indoor and outdoor learning environments.

Here you will find everything you need to know about what your child will be learning at school.

We have lots of exciting things to look forward to this term and are going to be very busy!

Religious Education

In RE this term we will learn about the meaning of our school mission statement - Love Jesus, Love Learning, Love Life. Our topics are 'God's World' where the children will learn that God made the world and how important it is to love and care for it and all God's wonderful creations, and 'God's Family' where we will talk about our families and recognise the fact that we all belong to God's family. The children will also learn about the events of Advent and Christmas. This term we will learn to make the Sign Of The Cross, will join in with a variety of prayers and will listen to stories from the bible.

Phonics and Literacy

The children will be introduced to the level 2 sounds of the Twinkl phonics programme and will practise recognising and writing them. We will learn to identify the initial sounds of words and pictures, practise segmenting and blending simple words and will learn to recognise and read tricky words which cannot be sounded out. 

Children will bring home four reading books each week, two from our school reading scheme and one Rhino Reader and minibook to allow them to practise the sounds they have learnt and the phonics skills they have been taught that week.

We will learn to develop our speaking and listening skills and will read the books 'The Gingerbread Man' and 'The Three Little Pigs', amongst many others related to our interests and topics, and will talk about the characters and stories in order to develop a good understanding of what we have heard.

Mathematics

In Maths we will develop our counting skills and will practise recognising, matching and comparing numbers and objects. We will learn to count sets of objects accurately, using one to one correspondence (touching each object as it is counted), and will learn to subitise (identifying how many objects are in a set without counting). We will also add and subtract, find one more and one less than sets of objects and numbers, will explore the composition of numbers to five and will learn about 2d shapes, focussing on circles, triangles and shapes with four sides.

Topic Activities

Our autumn term topics will be 'ourselves' where we will learn about our bodies, the senses, growing, homes and families and pets. We will create self portraits and model houses and will join in with action rhymes and songs such as 'The hokey cokey' and 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes'. During our 'People who help us' topic we will explore the jobs of people who help us through visitors to the school and a range of activities. We will act out job roles, create emergency vehicles and will take part in a Children in Need fundraising day.

This term we will explore technology and how it is used in everyday life and will take part in activities using BeeBots. We will learn a variety of songs and action rhymes and will take part in weekly Diddi Drama sessions.

Supporting your child with their learning

There are many ways in which you will be able to support your child with their learning during the autumn term. Every Friday Google Classrooms will detail what we have been learning during the week and will contain activity ideas you can complete with your child. You can access this using your log in details which will be provided to you. I will also send home additional games and activities.

Your child will bring home a phonics book which will contain the sounds they have been taught each week. Please help your child to practise recognising the sounds and tricky words regularly as this is so important for the development of their reading and writing skills. Please also listen to your child read every night, talk to them about the stories and characters and write a comment in their reading record. Books will be changed by a member of staff on a regular basis.

PE Days

Our PE day is Tuesday. Please make sure that your child comes into school in their PE kit on this day and remove earrings if your child has their ears pierced.

Forest School Dates:

Unless stated otherwise, our Forest School dates for this year are as follows:

24th October 2024

9th January 2025

20th March 2025

1st May 2025

19th June 2025 (amended date)

Please ensure that your child comes into school on these days dressed accordingly to the weather forecast in old clothes which you don't mind getting dirty! During the winter months it is important that children are wrapped up with multiple layers. If they are wearing an all in one they will need a coat for the afternoon along with a change of shoes. Please ensure that additional clothing your child brings in to school is clearly labelled with their name.

Open Invitation

You are always welcome to chat with me after school, or to make an appointment at the school office. We really look forward to working with you and your child this year.

Kind regards,

Miss Thwaite