Autumn 1

(September - October)

Phonics

We began the term with lots of sound games and activities to help us develop our listening skills and focus on environmental sounds. We enjoyed going on a sound walk and describing sounds we could hear! 

We have now started phase 2 phonics and are currently working on reading and writing initial sounds, and blending these sounds into simple words.  Our teachers have been so impressed with our skills! 

Starting School

We are enjoying reading 'Starting School', by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, and learning more about our new school! As we've read the book, we have learnt about places in our school and the people who work there.  We have been busy looking at photographs and using maps to help us explore our school and find various places.  We loved going on a school scavenger hunt! 

The Colour Monster

The Colour Monster story helped us to understand our feelings, the feelings of others and what we can do when we're not feeling our best.

We talked about what makes us happy, sad, afraid, angry and calm.

"[I'd be angry if] somebody broke my toy and didn't tell me." - Marnie

"If somebody hurt me it might make me angry and sad." - Elsie

" Thunderstorms make me scared and sad." - Spencer

"Having a cuddle [makes me happy]." - Teddy

"Playing with my brother [makes me happy]" - Quinton

"Playing with my sister and cuddles with my mummy [makes me happy]" - Ajooni

Autumn 2

(November - December)

Phonics

We are continuing our phase 2 phonics and are currently working on reading and writing initial sounds, and blending these sounds into simple words.  

Our weekly sounds are: 

w/c 03.11.25: j, v, w, x

w/c 10.11.25: y, z/zz, qu, ch

w/c 17.11.25: sh, th, ng, nk

w/c 24.11.25: ai, ee, igh, oa

For the remaining weeks of Autumn 2 we will be reviewing and assessing the GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences) taught so far. 

Maths

Circles and Trinagles

We started this half term with a mini topic on circles and triangles. We learnt to recognise these shapes and explain how we know if a shape is a cirlce or a triangle. 

4 and 5

Following on from our learning about 1, 2 and 3 before half term we are now focusing on deepening our understanding of 4 and 5.

How can we show 4 and 5? 

What is one more or one less within 5?

Shapes with 4 sides

We have really delved into building our understanding of shapes with 4 sides including squares and rectangles. Within this we explore sides and conrerns, noting that squares have 4 equal sides and rectangles have 2 long sides opposite each other and 2 short sides opposite each other. We considered that shapes remain the same even when turned a different way. We also folded paper shapes to see what new shapes they made!

Size and length

In our final weeks leading up to Christmas we will be revisiting size including putting objects in order according to size and finding things in our environment which are 'bigger', 'smaller', 'taller', 'shorter' and 'longer' than another object.

The Leaf Thief

Our first focus story of this half term is 'The Leaf Thief', by Alice Hemming and Nicola Slater. We started by looking at the cover of our book and making predictions about what might happen. We have enjoyed learning about the characters in the story and thinking about our key vocabulary: thief and stolen. We can explain what these words mean and use them appropriately in our discussions.

As part of our learning about the setting of our story - the woods - we visited Buck Woods near school to immerse ourselves in the environment. We explored using our senses, considering what we could see, hear and feel.

Lost in the Toy Museum

We kicked off our Lost in the Toy Museum topic with a mystery box! Inside it we found a letter and some old toys. Bunting the Cat told us that some toys were missing from the Museum so we made some posters to help!

This topic was really good to support our understanding of the past and to help us make links between life now and what it was like before. We really enjoyed exploring some of the older toys which we got to look at and try like the big yellow teapot which Mrs Thornton loved when she was little like us!

As well as our understanding of the past this gave us an opportuity to think scientifically about different materials and their properties and what makes them suitable to be used for different toys.

We even had a virtual Toy Detectives Workshop from Bradford Museums!

Little Owl and the Christmas Star

In our final few weeks of Autumn Term our focus story will be 'Little Owl and the Christmas Star' - a Nativity story.

We have started by familiarising with the story and its characters. This included some lovely simple role play by the children (and adults), after looking at the front cover only, thinking about what the owl and the star might do together.

We then went on to read the story, draw characters, continue with our role play and more! We have begun to learn some actions and songs which complement the story and will be practising these to share at our Jesus' Birthday Party celebration!

Christingle

On Monday 1st December we had our class Christingle service. We started by learning about what a Christingle is and what it symbolises. Then in our groups we each made a Christingle, talking about each of the parts as we assembled them. Finally we sang together and prayed.

Fun in provision!

Whatever the topic, we are also always responding to opportunities to learn and enjoy as they arise! We do this both though planned provision activities based on pupils' interests and learning needs but also spontaneously through in the moment shared exploration!

Recent examples include:

• Exploring the ice and frost through first hand experiences such as mark making in the frost with sticks, using tools to chip the ice and creating our own experiments!
• Collaborative colouring on a big scale - developing not only our creative and fine motor skills but also our cooperation skills.
• Wrapping Christmas presents (these are just junk model boxes!) to develop both understanfing the world and motor skills.