Welcome to the Foundation Stage Page
The Beginning of an Educational Adventure
This year (and beyond) our annual theme will be: One World One Family. We will focus on being a team, a family in solidarity. We will work with each other and for each other, locally and globally, so that we can build a hopeful future.
St. Paul teaches us that we are united and equal, connected by our shared faith in Christ.
Miss Chapman, Miss Matthews , Mrs Hudson and all of the staff in the Foundation Stage offer a very warm welcome to our new children starting this term, and, of course, a warm welcome back to our existing children.
We are very excited to announce that our new topic is:
Me, Myself and I!
We are going to have a very strong focus on ourselves and our relationships with others:
* knowing that we are all unique, but we all have similarities
* being able to identify feelings and emotions and learning how to deal with them
* being able to say sorry and know that they can forgive and be forgiven.
Activities will include learning poems, singing and playing music, sharing stories, looking in mirrors, exploring colour, learning about other faiths, games where things must be shared fairly and creating a celebration display of all the wonderful things we have noticed.
This leads, perfectly, on to our RE learning, during which we will be thinking about:
Creation and Covenant – Know that God made me, he made my family; Know that I am part of God’s family (Baptism), Know that God made the world and everything in it; understand that I should care for all God’s creation.
Prophecy and Promise – Know that Mary was chosen by God to be Jesus’ mother; Know that Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem; Know where Jesus was born; know that Shepherds visited Jesus; Know that Advent is a time to get ready for Advent; know that Jesus came for the whole world.
How you can help support our topic……
Please read the following stories at home with your child:
We will be sharing stories by the best children’s authors —please read them at home as well so that your child can practise and show-off their learning. They are:
The Gruffalo – The Gruffalo – Animated Read Aloud Book
The Very Hungry Caterpillar – The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Official Animated Film | Made For Kids | Eric Carle Book
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – 🐻 We’re going on a bear hunt – Animated and Read aloud!
Helping at Home — Communication and Handwriting
Encourage your child to:
- Talk about their day – ask what they enjoyed, what they noticed and what they would like to do
- Play ‘Story Detectives,’ – share a favourite story and pause to ask ‘what do you think will happen?’ or “why did they do that?”
- Silly Sentences – make up funny sentences together. E.g “the enormous pigeon went shopping for…”
- Retell a story – encourage your child to use toys, puppets or even drawings to act out a familiar story
- Build hand strength – encourage your child to use playdough to squash, squeeze and roll. Encourage them to make shapes, letters or simple objects
- Peg out the washing! – Encourage your child to help peg out the clothes to develop their hand strength and dexterity. It’s a fab activity the develop their finger strength and helps you with jobs around the home!
- Patterns – practise drawing lines, circles, zigzag’s, wiggles etc using different tools e.g. pencils, chalks outside, using sticks in mud etc
- Name writing – encourage your child to recognise and write their name, focusing on letter formation (ensuring capital letter to start their name and lower-case for the remaining letters)
You can access resources from Little Wandle here:
For parents | Letters and Sounds
More ideas
A quick and easy playdough recipe so that you can help your children develop strong fingers and wrists, creative skills, communication skills as they talk about the changes they see and make and social skills as they play together with you.
List of useful websites for EYFS
For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)
Phonics play
Lots of phonics based games for children to play
Top marks
Lots of different maths activities for children to play
CBeebies
Lots of interactive stories and games for you to play
YouTube is great to watch the following on:
- Numberblocks – this helps children to understand numbers up to and beyond 10 by using different characters
- Tricky word song – these help children with reading and spelling words such as; I, go, to, he, she etc
- Jolly Phonics songs and actions – these help children read and say different sounds
- Alphablocks – these shows help with segmenting and blending sounds in words
- Cosmic Kids – yoga suitable for young children
Further Information – Early Years Development Matters Curriculum Guidance 6.7534 DfE Development Matters Report And Illustrations Web 2
