This year you are lucky enough to have two different teachers within your class. Mrs Harbidge will be your teacher Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs Westwell will be your teacher Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. 

Miss Davies is your full time teaching assistant in Preschool 

Stretch and grow will take place after February half term on a Monday afternoon and a Friday morning. Please send your children in comfy active clothes so that they can join in! 

We will be doing forest school every Wednesday so please come dressed appropriately - during the winter please make sure your child is wearing warm clothing and comes to preschool with a warm coat and hat. We will also continue to enjoy lots of outdoor play so please make sure your child is wearing shoes appropriate for running, jumping, climbing etc.

It is important that your child builds up a love of books and reading for pleasure! 

Reading to your child every night is so important to help to develop their communication and language skills. This is also a precious time for you to share with your child. 

In school, we also share stories daily and base some of our learning around a chosen key text. We focus on orally re-telling the stories, adding actions and making marks to represent the characters and key parts. 

Story bags will be given out to your child when they are a focus child for that week. This includes a book for you to share and enjoy with your child, as well as some other resources. Please look after the resources within the bag and return it on Monday ready to be sent home with another child. 

We also have a lending library which we will introduce to you and your children during the autumn term and then you will be able to freely borrow and return books to share with your child.

During the first few weeks of the autumn term, our focus in Preschool is settling the children, spending lots of time in continuous provision getting to know all of our new children, completing baseline observations and assessments and establishing key daily routines.

We start our topic towards the end of Autumn 1, and it carries on all the way up to December when we then begin our Christmas fun!

Our Autumn Term topic focusses on Ourselves and our topic question is What makes me, me?

Within this topic, the children will be learning all about themselves. We will be exploring what we look like, identifying pictures of ourselves and key features of our face and body. We will also talk about our families and who we live with and then look at our own history and share what we were like as a baby. In phonics, we will be focussing on environmental and will be going on lots of listening walks and playing sounds bingo games to distinguish between different sounds in the environment. We will also explore instrumental sounds focusing lots on how we can play the instruments in different ways.  In Maths we will focus on counting and joining in with number rhymes.

Our key texts are:

• Happy to be me by 
• The Colour of us by 
• The Colour Monster by 

Our Personal, Social and Emotional focus for this term will be...

• To begin using emotion vocabulary for example happy and sad
• To begin to notice and ask basic questions about differences 
• To become familiar with daily routines
• To begin to develop relationships/friendships with staff and other children.

Our Communication and Language focus for this term will be...

• To recognise and point to a range of objects if asked about them.
• To focus on an activity of his/her choice and can be distracted by an adult
• To begin to listen and respond to a simple instruction
• To begin to listen to a simple story of interest, with the help of the pictures

Our Physical Development focus for this term will be... 

• To begin to show an increasing desire to be independent, such as wanting to feed himself/herself and dress or undress.
• To begin exploring different materials and tools
• To  show and interest in kicking and throwing balls
• To begin showing an interest in building, using a range of resources.

Our Literacy focus for this term will be...

• To begin to enjoy listening to different sounds through rhymes and stories
• To begin to show an interest in a range of different books exploring them independently and with adults or peers
• To begin exploring making marks with different media and to draw freely with a range of resources beginning to give meaning to their marks.
• To engage in daily phase 1 phonics activities focussing on instrumental sounds and environmental sounds.

Our Maths focus for this term will be...

• To begin to show counting like behaviour such as making sounds, pointing or saying some numbers in sequence.
• To combine objects like stacking blocks and cups
• To begin to count in everyday contexts and take part in finger rhymes with numbers.
• To begin to compare amounts saying ‘lots’ or ‘more’

Our Understanding the world focus for this term will be...

• To recall and talk about significant past events such as trips, celebrations, family outings
• To explore what happens to the immediate environment in Autumn
• To share special events and festivals that they celebrate and learn about other festivals 
• To develop new relationships and friendships 
• To get involved in sensory experiences in the classroom 
• To explore the indoor and outdoor environment in the classroom
• To use photographs to talk about themselves and their family

• Our Expressive, Arts and Design focus for this term will be... 

• To begin exploring music and sound through playing instruments, joining in with songs and rhymes and moving their body to music
• To engage in some real life pretend play, role playing their own personal experiences.
• To access the mark making and creative areas in the classroom
• To use a range of different media when mark making