During this first half term we had a significant focus on settling the children into the school and the routines that run alongside this.  The children have got to know the classroom and outdoor space better and understand that it is divided into different areas with the activities in these areas changing weekly to build on objectives across the curriculum.

In literacy this half term we focused on sharing stories, listening for initial sounds, rhyming and developing our mark making. In maths we looked at patterns, number recognition and counting objects. During our ‘Me and My Community’ topic we explored families, looking at similarities and differences, knowing how we change as we age and identifying what makes a good friend. We joined in with songs during our music lessons and explored how to make music using our bodies and in our dance lessons during PE we learnt how to move our bodies to music and created our own mini flash dances. In our other PE lessons we began to find out about why it is important for us to exercise to keep healthy. Lastly during our Understanding the World lessons the children explored different people who help us, learnt about different communities and learnt about some seasonal changes.

This half term we have learnt through our main topic ‘Sunshine and Sunflowers’ where we found out about how plants and animals grow and change over time and understood how to keep safe in the sun.. We looked at how plants change through the seasons, learnt about different plants and visited the local area to see how and where things grow. As part of the topic we made art with resources from our natural environment such as pebble pictures.

We then had two mini topics, one entitled ‘Splash’ which helped us cool down in the hot weather and another entitled ‘Moving On’ which helped us in our preparations for Year 1. We also began to slowly increase the amount of time spent on focus activities whilst continuing with independent learning time to make the transition into Year 1 as smooth as possible for the children in September as well as arranging lots of other transition opportunities. 

In music we continued to develop our ability to tap rhythms and identify different instruments we can hear in music. In our forest school sessions we explored our environment to find out what is growing and living in our local habitat. In phonics have recapped our prior learning of phase 3 sounds and extended our phonics beyond phase 3, becoming confident writing and reading words and sentences containing these sounds. In maths we learnt about numbers beyond 10, understanding the place value of numbers and learning about doubles, odds and even numbers. We also looked at patterns in number and understanding how this can help us to solve trickier problems. 

This half term Acorns have been busy learning through different topics. The first was called 'Once Upon a Time' through which the children explored a large range of traditional tales and some nursery rhymes. When we learnt about Jack and the Beanstalk we planted our own bean seeds and watched how the roots developed and the bean stem grew all the way up to the castles before we took them home to plant in our gardens. When we learnt about Cinderella we found out about the Royal Family and turned photos of ourselves into Kings and Queens by adding our own crowns and royal garments. We enjoyed joining in with the repeating refrains in The Three Little Pigs and practised using different voices as we acted as the different characters. 

At the end of this unit Acorns moved on to a topic called 'Reflections and Shadows' where the children explored different places they might find their reflection, looked at how shadows were made and how shadows made by the sun 'move' as time moves on. The children also had a go at making their own shadow puppets using torch light. 

At the end of the half term the children were excited to receive some duckling eggs and learnt about the importance of the incubator. They were very excited to see several of the ducklings hatch during the school day. The children have helped us to look after the ducklings, knowing that they need cleaning out, new water and new food each day. This final week in particular the children have enjoyed taking the ducklings swimming - watching them dive under the water has been a highlight.