Summer Term 2 (2024)

Welcome back to the summer term! I hope we all have a great time learning together as we come to the end of our Reception year.

During the first half of the summer term we enjoyed learning about The sleepy Bumblebee, learning about bugs, developing skills as artists and we held an amazing minibeast art exhibition! We will continue to experience an exciting range of opportunities and think about our next steps to develop as curious learners. Lets enjoy the summer weather and explore as nature detectives.

We secure our focus on the prime areas of learning (Communication and Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional Development) to underpin everything we do. In addition we will plan and experience many activities and opportunities to enhance the specific areas of learning (Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design). We will plan a smooth transition as we think about moving to Year 1.

Daily phonics sessions will continue to build on our phonic knowledge through our Little Wandle programme. As readers, books will be sent home weekly, after reading the book three times at school. Children will also bring home a library book each week. Our phonics focus this half term will be on learning new tricky words as well as words with two consonants together, longer words and words with different endings.

Our Talk for writing text this half term is Somebody Swallowed Stanley. This story has been re-written as a storytelling version.We will learn to tell the story using a story map and with actions. Then we will deepen our understanding through practical activities to explore the setting, characters and structure of the story. This is a great story to help us find out how we can look after the sea and ocean creatures. As writers, we will develop our skills in writing new words and in securing our sentence writing skills. We will also develop in writing more than one sentence on some occasions. In addition we will focus on securing our fine motor control to help us when we write.

As mathematicians, we will deepen our understanding of patterns in numbers, exploring doubles and sharing. We will also develop spatial reasoning and simple mapping skills.

Our new topic for this half term will be On the beach – This project helps us to learn about the plants and animals that live at the seaside. We will also explore holidays in the past and the importance of keeping safe in the sun. We will share books to help us learn, including Lucy and Tom at the Seaside (Shirley Hughes), Who’s hiding at the seaside (Katherine McEwen), Clem and Crab (Fiona Lumbers) and Hooray for fish (Lucy Cousins). We will use recyling/junk for some of our art projects.

As nature detectives we will keep a close eye on how the seasons are changing, enjoying the summer weather and the beautiful plants, trees and creatures in our school grounds. We are also excited about our planned trip to Vurlands Farm – here we take our explorations further to see animals, birds, bugs, trees and plants.

Things to remember:

Please bring a drink of water every day for snack time/lunch

Summer weather can be unpredictable so bring outdoor clothing to cope with this – rain coats for those wet days and especially sun hats for sunny days. Please apply sun screen before coming to school.

Read every day and write comments in the reading diary. This should include time for re-visiting your sounds in your phonics book, reading your Little Wandle book and looking at your sharing book. There are lots of new tricky words so make time to learn them too.

Remember to check the website for our weekly class blog and homework activities. We love it when you leave us a message too as we read them out in our class.

As well as outdoor physical play, we will continue to take part in a weekly P.E session in the hall or outside (Wednesday). We will be using a range of equipment, including balls, bats, hoops and beanbags.

We will continue to welcome children through our blue gate from 8.45-8.55 in the morning.

If you have any questions or you would like to send me information about any of your learning at home, please contact me by email.

Mrs Puddick