C is for Community

We plan our EYFS curriculum using ‘big’ ideas. We have progressed from thinking about our unique selves to how we are part of a community.

This ensures learning is meaningful, drawing on children’s personal experiences and extending their knowledge through a range of new ones.

Today the children had a memorable visit from the Police and Community Support Officers. They have been studying the role of a police officer and the equipment they use through books, poems and songs. Children were able to compare Police Officer Dominik’s uniform from Life Savers the book to Police Officer Sam’s. The children applied and used vocabulary such as, “radio, helmet, handcuffs, siren, protect” while also learning new words such as, “custody, baton” and, “shield.” They learnt about different ways the police travel and how they help others.

This knowledge will be very useful when we apply it to acting in our Police Station role-play area.

This topic about community also allows us to develop children’s understanding of place which supports their geographical understanding as they move through the school. Watch out for our religious education learning too as we learn about religious communities; We have arranged for an Imam to visit in the next few weeks . . .

 

Inclusion: A tale of five rooms!

This month we have an article in the magazine ‘Headteacher Update’ that tells the story of how Sir Alexander Fleming won the NASEN Award for Primary Provision of the Year 2023 and how at the heart of this success is the nurturing and inclusive provision we provide to meet the diverse needs of our learners.

Click here to read the full article and search for page 30!

Headteachers update Jan 2024 page 30

What makes a home a home?

This is our learning all about homes.

Practitioners here plan the curriculum with our unique children, families and community in mind. We choose topics that all our children can relate to and have had experiences of so that we can engage and motivate them. We set a home learning task and ask our families to share aspects of their lives that we may not know about. This supports children’s speaking and communication skills and develops their awareness that others may be similar or different to them.

We found out that most of our children live in houses but some of them live in bungalows. We explored the different features including the rooms in certain homes. Our core text of Peace at Last by Judith Kerr supported us to differentiate between rooms; having themed resources about different rooms develops children’s language in the best way possible, as they are able make connections. We sang songs about homes and looked at how homes are portrayed in books. Children acted out what they learnt about homes and applied this in our home corner provision. We compared different types of homes. Children built and designed homes in the small world provision and we enhanced it with a caravan. The project inspired us to construct and mark-make in a variety of contexts. We were able to innovate songs about houses to songs about a range of different homes. This project has allowed us to recognise and celebrate diversity.

This learning will continue and be extended in the Spring term, as we think about how our homes fit into our community in Sutton Hill and how homes have changed from the past. These threads are woven throughout our whole school Geography and History curriculum and will lay the foundations for later learning.

“Let’s put on our mittens and button up our coats . . . ” The awe and wonder of winter!

Our curriculum takes into account seasonal and natural opportunities that we know children will be fascinated by! We have been learning about the season of winter and spotting signs outside. This topic has been a vehicle for cross-curricular learning; developing children’s understanding of time, making physical marks in the frost to develop our motor skills, developing our knowledge and understanding of the natural world and encouraging us to communicate.

By being immersed in real experiences and enhancing this with poems, songs and books the children have learnt many words and concepts such as, “frost, bare, evergreen, hard, robin, frozen, ice, snow.” Adults encouraged children to use adventurous language too – “That shard of ice looks like a shark’s fin!”

The adults have high expectations of children and have been talking and showing them how some birds migrate to hotter countries in the winter. The children have been feeding the birds in different ways as they know that food is harder to find in the winter. Lacie used her knowledge of three, from our mathematics sessions, to subitise three pieces of cereal left on one of our bird feeders! Octavia and Archie spotted a nest and built another for the birds to lay their eggs in, in the coming spring. (This will make their future learning easier as they make connections to past experiences.)

The shape of the ice fascinated the children and they loved changing the shape by throwing, smashing and crushing the ice! We explored the concept of being trapped too, as there were many natural and some man-made objects stuck in the ice.

We returned at different times of the day and noticed some of the frost had gone. Some children had theories about why this happened and it led us to think about the scientific concept of melting. The children experimented melting the ice with their bodies, including their tongues! This made us think about what ice was made from.

Our Sequence of Learning for Expressive Art and Design

We have designed and made baby food, following our whole-school sequence for learning in DT.

We were able to apply our knowledge of babies, their development and needs to this project. We learnt skills to cut and puree fruit and vegetables. This is key knowledge we will need to be successful in year 1 when we design and make a healthy smoothie.

We gave some to baby Rowan’s mother to give our learning a real purpose.

We used information books to follow recipes and the fiction book Avocado Baby to inspire us. We are hoping baby Rowan becomes as strong as Avocado Baby once he’s eaten our designs!

Our first experience of the theatre

We plan a range of experiences to ensure children gain cultural capital by attending our setting.

After watching Sealegs Puppet Theatre at school in November, we visited Theatre Severn this week to watch an exciting performance of Dear Santa!

It was filled with music, songs and magic! The children were enthralled by the props, lights and actors. They listened and attended for a long period of time and joined in with nursery rhymes and actions.

We had studied the story by exploring the book, presents and used the theme of toys to develop our pre-phonics learning of environmental sounds. It is also an innovation of Dear Zoo which is one of our core texts.

“My favourite part was the cat!”

“The elf was hiding!”

“Santa sent something else.”

A particular highlight for some of the children was the journey on the minibus. They chatted about the, “huge lorries” and, “high bridges” they observed on the way there.

We’re Going On a Baby Hunt!

Our curriculum is sequenced in a way which ensures children are given time to practise, layer their understanding, make connections and apply their learning to new contexts.

Our learning about babies has helped our Religious understanding of the Christian story of the first Christmas.

Stories are at the core of everything we do. We have listened to versions of the story in books, films and through images and artistic interpretations as well as through small world story-telling, puppets and role-play.

We had a visit from Becky Dotson who is a Christian herself. She helped us to explore the story through song. We loved it because it was an innovation of our reading spine book, ‘We’re Going On a Bear Hunt.”

Everything we do is for a reason! We were inspired to draw the Baby Jesus in his manger and used these as our Christmas Cards for our families.

The children also applied their knowledge about faces, from last term. Check out those eyelashes and nostrils!

Oh baby! Have we always been this way?

Take a look at our sequence of learning about babies. This addresses lots of knowledge from the area of learning Understanding the world.

Children can now answer our enquiry question; Have we always been this way?

“No I’m a child now. When I was a baby I was little and didn’t talk!” Octavia

“I was different when I was a baby. I not a baby now.” Archie

“When I was a baby I had nappies. Now I don’t!” Emmie-May

Our learning about this topic won’t stop here . . . we are looking forward to a baby clinic role-play in the future to apply our knowledge. We will explore pregnancy, growth and care in more detail over time so that our knowledge is secure and deepened.

Real experiences enrich our learning, making it memorable . . . Baby Rowan

We have been learning about babies as part of an Understanding of the World project.

We have analysed objects, looked at baby photographs, learnt songs, nursery rhymes and explored a variety of books about babies.

We now know a range of vocabulary and concepts linked to this.

“When I was a baby I went in a pram because I couldn’t walk.”

“I was a baby a long, long time ago.”

“Babies need a high chair or they would fall off!”

“A crib like rock a bye baby.”

“I’m a child. I have a cup not a bottle.”

Today we had an expert visitor, a real baby visit the setting. We noticed the size of the baby, it’s clothing and the things it needed. We told his mummy what we knew and asked whether the baby drank from a bottle or had a nappy. We sang it a lullaby.

Poppy, poppy what do you say? Wear me on Remembrance Day . . .

We have been exploring our school value of respect by learning about Remembrance and poppies.

Children learnt and can recite a poem about the meaning of and symbolism of the poppy.

We used this as a meaningful way to develop our learning in art.

sequence of learning form