EYFS – Newsletter – 10.01.25

What a first week back! The sub-zero temperatures have made it an interesting week to cover our learning around tropical rainforests as part of our Amazing Animals topic. But in class, we have ramped the heating up and pretended it’s Borneo! The children have enjoyed learning about where the tropical rainforests are in the world and which animals live there. We’ve used atlases, world maps and Google Earth to explore these regions of our planet and have talked about the types of animals that live there and how different they are to those animals we have in this country. The children have had opportunity to craft their own tiger mask from a paper plate; create jungle landscape paintings inspired by those of Henri Rousseau and colour a variety of rainforest creatures. To practise their phonics, the children have been challenged to build words from the letters hidden on eggs in a snakes nest to spell out the names of different animals and they have been reading instructions to help them place animals on a jungle scene. 

Phonics sessions this week introduced the children to the first three sounds of ‘Phase 3’ of our phonics scheme: ‘j’ (jet) ‘v’ (vest) and ‘w’ (wave). The children have really impressed us with how they have retained their learning from before the holidays and are keeping on improving their skills. We have practised writing words and even some sentences using our newly learned phonemes and are working to finesse our letter formation (any practise at home is always helpful!). Reading skills have been practised in fun ways like matching games  and acting out different actions based on what they have read on instruction cards (jump, jet or jog?).

In Maths we have been looking at shape, space and measure. We have been exploring the concept of capacity and how it explains the space within a container. To investigate this concept the children have been filling different containers with the same object and also filling the same containers with different sized objects. The children have also been practising the use of balance scales to explore concepts of weight and mass. 

TROPICAL WORLD REMINDER: On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week, we shall be taking the children to Tropical World via minibus. If you haven’t already, please can you fill in the permission form on the school website EYFS page. There is a voluntary contribution of £1:00 on ParentPay to help us cover costs, if you would like to contribute. 

Have a great weekend! Let’s hope for some warmer weather!

Dates for the Diary

Monday 13th OR Tuesday 14th OR Wednesday 15th of January – Reception children to visit Tropical World (please see permission form on school website).

Friday 14th February – School closes for half term break