Statement of Intent - Foundation Stage

The Early Years are vital for a child’s social, emotional, physical and academic development.  The Foundation Stage creates the essential building blocks for future learning. At Herne CE Infant and Nursery school, we have an ethos where children flourish in a safe, nurturing, creative and inspiring environment.  Our child centred approach offers children opportunities to explore and learn with the support and guidance of experienced Early Years practitioners. We embed the Characteristics of Effective Learning in daily routines and promote many skills through both teacher led and child initiated sessions. We challenge our children with problem solving activities, encourage risk taking and perseverance, and support them with negotiating their ideas with others. Life skills develop through a wide range of creative, topic led activities. We promote imagination, independence and wellbeing in all of our children across all areas of the curriculum.

Helping My Child To Learn At Home

TERM 5

TERM 4

Our stimulating learning themes this term have been ‘Traditional Tales‘, ‘Happily Ever After’, ‘Frogging Around’ and ‘Springing into Easter’

Some of our highlights are:

• Practising our sound talk and blend skills with words containing digraphs/trigraphs and longer words with two or three syllables
• Learning even more tricky words
• Learning about what a sentence is and identifying full stops, exclamation marks and question marks
• Creating story maps to order parts of a story
• Listening to non-fiction books to help us learn facts and knowing the key features of this genre of book
• Reading in groups to practise our prosody and comprehension skills
• Joining in with some new Writedance sessions to help us with our gross and fine motor skills
• Have a go at forming all the letters of the alphabet in a pre-cursive script
• Taking part in a ‘big write’ challenge each week where we have written in speech bubbles, made lists, wrote dictations and even created a sentence or two
• Continuing to write the letters in our names in a cursive script with a capital letter only at the beginning
• Learning how numbers are made up of smaller numbers and finding out about number bonds to ten
• Knowing how to combine two groups of objects to make a total in a range of visual and pictorial ways
• Learning to read and write a number sentence to add two numbers together
• Exploring the part-part-whole method to help with our calculation skills
• Having fun with 2D shape by naming and identifying them
• Understanding and using positional language
• Continuing our numeral writing skills
• Feeling good each week as part of our Feel Good Friday
• Looking at the signs of Spring in the world around us
• Creating many themed arts and crafts, focusing on form and texture
• Developing our ICT skills by learning how to click, drag and click using a mouse on a computer
• Knowing what the Internet is and how to stay safe on the computer
• Practising our scissor cutting skills even more with complex shapes
• Learning new Worship songs ready for our Easter Festival in church
• Finding out why Christians celebrate Easter and why the cross is a special symbol
• Exploring our bodies using small and large equipment safely, learning how to jump, climb, balance in a variety of different ways including position and direction
• Frequently visiting areas around such as the HIVE and Wildlife Area as part of our Teacher Time
• Joining in with Science week where the focus was ‘growing’
• Coming to school in non-school uniform and having crazy hair in order to raise money for Comic Relief
• Demonstrating our COOL Time Character Characteristics whilst we learn through play indoors and out

TERM 3

Our exciting learning themes this term have been ‘A Winter Wonderland’, ‘Chinese New Year’ and ‘Year R’s Prehistoric Adventure’

Some of our highlights are:

• Learning the sound of more digraphs and sounds of some trigraphs
• Practising our sound talk and blend skills
• Learning many tricky words
• Joining in with Shared Storytelling to create our own story maps
• Reading in groups to practise our prosody and comprehension skills
• Joining in with some Writedance sessions that help us with our Herne Handwriting Patterns
• Have a go at forming some cursive letters
• Writing our first words in cursive onto paper to label a dinosaur
• Continuing to write the letters in our names in a cursive script
• Exploring the bigger numbers within ten, comparing place value and the different ways these numbers can be represented including subitising
• Having a go at number bonds to five
• Combining two groups of objects together to make a total
• Practising our numeral writing skills
• Feeling good each week as part of our Feel Good Friday
• Looking at the signs of Winter in the world around us
• Creating many themed arts and crafts, using cold colours
• Finding out about animals from cold places around the world such as polar bears and penguins
• Watching our Dino Cam to see which dinosaurs have visited our school when we are at home
• Finding out some facts about dinosaurs and learning the names of some of them
• Developing our ICT skills by learning to change the size and colour on a paint package
• Knowing that the X at the top corner of a computer activity will close it
• Practising our scissor cutting skills in a range of learning activities
• Learning new Worship songs
• Hearing about stories from the bible and the lessons they teach us
• Learning how to throw, catch, roll, bounce and move balls as part of our PE hall times
• Frequently visiting areas around such as the HIVE and Wildlife Area as part of our Teacher Time
• Demonstrating our COOL Time Character Characteristics in our own play
• Finding out about Chinese New Year such as where China is, how Chinese New Year is prepared for and what happens. We created a range of arts and crafts, listened to music and even tried some Chinese food! Yum!

TERM 2

Our exciting learning themes this term have been ‘Let your Light Shine’, ‘Rock a Bye Baby’, ‘Nursery Rhymes’, ‘Stick Man’ and ‘Sparkle and Shine!’

Some of our highlights are:

• Learning many sounds of graphemes, including digraphs, and learning to sound talk and blend

• Exploring numbers to ten, comparing place value and the skills of more and less

• Practising our numeral writing skills

• Joining in, discussing and exploring repeated patterns in songs, stories and dance, and using colours and sizes to create our own

• Being part of Maths week with the rest to the school, developing new mathematical skills

• Looking at the signs of Autumn in the world around us, including going on a walk to Curtis Woods to find Autumn treasures

• Exploring different ways of creating art and being inspired by real artists such as Mondrian

• Finding out about some ways other children celebrate different festivals such as Hanukkah and Diwali

• Finding out about Bonfire Night and creating many sparkly arts and crafts

• Learning about Remembrance Day, producing poppies and taking part in a special two minute silence

• Developing out ICT skills using a mouse and a computer to click and drag, and making Beebots move around a maze by pressing buttons

• Making a range of sculptures such as Diwali candles and Incey Wincey spiders using clay

• Practising our scissor cutting skills some more

• Singing and learning Nursery Rhymes we did not know

• Having a year group cinema experience watching a short film as part of our Wellbeing Wednesday sessions

• Learning about The Nativity Story from the bible and all the characters from it

• Finding out about what babies need and how they grow. We even brought in baby photos to guess which of our friends they were

• Performing our first Nativity Play to parents in the hall

• Joining in with some Writedance sessions that help us with our Herne Handwriting Patterns

• Having a go at writing the letters in our names in a cursive script

• Exploring our gross motor skills in the hall by moving our bodies and enhancing our balancing skills in many ways.

• Visiting areas around the school such as the HIVE and Wildlife Area as part of our Teacher time

• Finding out about our COOL Time Characteristic Characters whilst we learn through play.

TERM 1

Our Settling-in Time

We are just so proud of all the children in Dormouse, Squirrel and Hedgehog class, who have transitioned into our Herne Infant family really well. We started our first few weeks together by getting to know each child on a 1:1 basis in their new classroom, shortly followed by half day sessions in two small groups. This built up to being all together for mornings. We even tried our school dinners for the first time! Finally, we all came together for whole day sessions, learning many routines and making many friends.

Some of the things we have done include:

• Getting to know all of the adults who are here to help us learn and keep us safe in our class and the Year R family
• Having daily circle times, where we got to learn our friend’s names and playing lots of games to support speaking and listening, and turn taking
• Identifying our class instrumental noise to know when it is time to stop, look, listen and when it is time to line up during outdoor active play times. We also have a tidy up song, which helps us to boogie whilst clearing away all of our things.
• Learning where all our things go and where to put things in our inside and outside environment
• Going for a little tour around our school, seeing siblings, new friends and adults that form part of our wider school family
• Making many arts and crafts to brighten up our rooms that help us with our fine motor skills such as cutting, drawing, painting and printing
• Having our first class worship and finding out what Worship is and the many symbols of God and Jesus
• Joining in with COOL Times (Continuing with Our Own Learning through play), developing and demonstrating many skills whilst we play. We have learnt about Toby the Turtle, who reminds us to share and play with our friends nicely-Team work!

We would like to thank the parents for all the information you gave us regarding your wonderful children on our parent partnership days, and for their valuable support throughout this transition time. The children have done so well!

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