Welcome to Early Years! We have 5 expert teachers, Miss Pateman, Mrs Hosten-White, Mrs Stagg, Miss Griffin and Miss Smith, and are also supported by our fantastic team of teaching assistants. We have a huge learning space to explore and make the most of every day, spread across three classrooms and our outdoor area. We split into smaller groups with specific adults for parts of the day, and learn through a mixture of adult-led and child-led learning.       

• Starting out in Reception
• Nursery's latest curriculum map - more abour what we're learning  
• Reception's curriculum map - find out about our current topics

Home learning ideas:

• We use Tapestry to share work that we have done in school and share ideas for learning beyond school. Speak to one of our teachers if you're not sure about how to log in.
• Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read. 
• We have daily phonics sessions which follow the ReadWriteInc scheme. They have lots of guidance on how you can support your child with phonics at home here. 
• Talk about favourite things with different people in your family, helping your child to understand what ‘likes’ you share - and to realise that we don’t all like the same things.
• We’ve been practicing our counting a lot in class, so building on this at home would be a huge help - you could count houses on the way to school, footsteps on the way to bed, shoes in the house, players on the team, objects in the shopping trolley, claps, nods... Anything and everything you can think of!
• Support your child in building their imagination and storytelling, building things using big cardboard boxes and pieces of fabric, or dressing up and pretending to be nurse, doctors or parents. 
• Visit the library and see what books you can find that your child recognises already. Are there any they can retell? It’s quick and easy to sign-up, and you can access a huge number of free ebooks and audiobooks: www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives 
• Have a go at some of the fab art activities on the Tate Kids site: www.tate.org.uk/kids/make

Our latest news:

• In the last two weeks before Easter, Butterfly and Dragonfly classes each had a brilliant day out at Ardley Church Farm. We met the lambs, goats and guinea pigs, explored the fairy trail and played in the woodland. We all had a lovely day out and learnt loads about the lives of different animals - and Nursery will be following in our footsteps, with their visit to Church Farm planned for the Summer Term.
 

 
• In Reception we took delivery of an incubator filled with eggs. We watched them carefully, and eventually they began to hatch. A clutch of chicks emerged, and we have loved watching them grow day by day, helping us to better understand their life-cycles.
 
• We have had two Stay and Play sessions this term - one themed around Mother’s Day and one linked to Easter. We were delighted that so many of you were able to join us in class, making perfume from petals, lemon juice and water, hunting for letters hidden in plastic eggs, decorating biscuits and finding out more about what we’ve been up to in school!
 

 
• This term has included lots major events that we have enjoyed celebrating and learning about, including Chinese New Year, Eid and Holi. In March, we made the most of World Book Day, dressing up as our favourite book characters, making bookmarks and reading stories in different places

We have been learning about... 

In maths we’ve been learning to order numbers, starting with 1-5 and then progressing to 10 and beyond. We have made number lines to help us to count forwards and back, and have been introduced to part- part-whole models.

We all develop our phonics in small groups every day, learning initial sounds, practising writing letters, and blending and segmenting the sounds we know to read and build words. 

During Science Week we explored floating and sinking, met some amazing animals in our Teaching Talons session and made our own ’egg drop’ contraptions - and we really enjoyed watching these being dropped off the roof with real eggs inside!

This term's topics

Communication & Language - This term we will be developing our use of conjunctions whilst speaking, using words like and, when, if and because to link our ideas together. Linked to our topic, we will be talking about our lives and our bodies, extending our vocabulary and thinking about the ways in which we are all similar and the ways we are all unique. We will also work on using the past tense correctly to talk about things that we have done. Throughout the term, we will continue to work on our listening and questioning skills, asking and responding to how and why questions linked both to class stories and our independent play.

Personal, Social & Emotional Learning - We will be developing our turn taking-skills, playing lots of group games and acting out stories together, as well as learning to follow instructions that include several different steps. We will also be building our independence, choosing resources, making decisions and changing clothes on our own.

Physical Development - In our weekly PE sessions with Mr Butler, we will continue to develop our coordination and spatial awareness, finding space, moving in different ways and travelling and stopping with control. In class, meanwhile, we will be developing our fine motor skills, focussing in particular on correct letter formation, and will have lots of opportunities for mark-making throughout the day.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.