Reception 2024 - 2025

Welcome to Reception!

  Summer Term

This class page is where you will find information about what your child will be learning in the term ahead. Please see below for some of our planned curriculum and learning opportunities for this term across the 7 areas of the EYFS Framework, as well as our RE and You, Me, Everyone programmes.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) at Ursuline offers your child numerous opportunities to develop in the following prime areas of learning:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development

as well as another four areas of learning:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Expressive Arts and Design
• Understanding the World                                                                                       

• RE

  Our focus this half term will be learning about the Pentecost story and hearing that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us to be our friend.  We will be exploring what this means to us in our daily lives, especially as we understand that we are all different yet connected to each other and there to help each other. This leads us nicely onto our final topic of the year, where we hear about us being children of God and that it means for us and the communities to which we belong. 

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• Communication and Language

We will continue to have lots of opportunity to talk and to understand how to listen carefully to each other through our continuous provision activities, where staff will be engaging in purposeful conversations with children in their play. We will be modelling back and forth exchanges using full sentences and encouraging the use of new vocabulary taught through our quality texts, Fantastic Fish and Somebody Swallowed Stanley.

• Personal Social and Emotional Development

We will encourage respectful relationships with peers and adults where children will learn to begin to self and co regulate using our emotions check in, sensory box and Zen Den. We will encourage the children to identify and link book characters' emotions with their own to help with this. We will help the children to develop independent use of buttons, zips, shoes, coats etc and teach them strategies to look after their belongings. We will talk about the different factors that support their overall health and well-being, such as being active, spending time outdoors, eating healthily and having a good sleep routine as well as keeping ourselves safe. 

As we move towards the end of the year, we will be doing frequent transition activities, such as seeing Year 1 staff in the hall, visits to the year 1 resource area and classrooms. joining Year 1 and 2 for prayer and liturgy as well as our main transition day. More information will follow about this closer to the time. All of these activities help the children to prepare for moving to a new year group. The idea of new beginnings and changing into something new is also explored in our Summer 2 text, Somebody Swallowed Stanley including all the positives that we can take from change.

        You, Me, Everyone

Our bespoke You, Me, Everyone programme offers many opportunities to discuss ways in which the children can develop personally,socially and emotionally. This term we will be continuing to etalk with the children about keeping themselves safe, with a reminder about their body being private. We also explore the people who can help us if we ever have a problem or need to talk. We then finish our year by thinking about how we can love God by loving others, showing kindness to each other as God wants us to do. 

•   Physical Development   

PE lessons will continue to be on a Thursday (children to come into school dressed in their PE kits please) and this term we will focus on the skills needed to prepare for our Reception Sports Day which will take place on Wednesday 21st May 2-3pm. Running, balancing a quoit on our head, egg and spoon and taking part in a simple obstacle race will form some of our activities on the day and the children are practising hard to enable them to hopefully enjoy their first Ursuline Sports Day. Parents and carers are invited to watch and support your child. Our Sports Day is for Reception children only.

We are continually developing our gross and fine motor skills in lots of ways in Reception, using play dough, threading, colouring and writing on a large and small scale as well as rolling tyres, carrying buckets of mud, water, sand and crates in our continuous provision. The range of continuous provision activities is so important in building their hand and eye coordination, core strength, stability and balance, needed for future learning.

Literacy

Our quality texts form the basis of our well-planned curriculum. 

Our book choices this term relate to our themes:

Transport and Oceans

Naughty Bus

Naughty Bus is a fantastic book which follows the adventures of a mischievious bus who acts first and thinks later! This book helps us to explore different vehicles from London buses to rescue vehicles as well as look at London as a capital city and examine where that is in relation to us in Liverpool. This super texts gives so many opportunities for Expressive Arts and Design as well as Understanding the World not forgetting PSED, thinking about self regulation and the choices we make.

Somebody Swallowed Stanley'

In this story, we think about the effects of littering on our beautiful world and the creatures in it.  

Our focus for writing in the spring term is on writing short sentences using CVC words using correct letter formation. e.g.' I am sad.', 'It is red.'

We will be encouraging the children to write sentences for all their creations. Eg. It is a ...  This is a ...

Fantastic Fish

A non-fiction text helps us find out about some super fish and 'jump' into aquatic life, maybe even explore our own aquarium. This text inspires us to deepen our awareness and understanding of the natural world. It also serves as foci for observations of fish and sea creatures for us to then paint, draw and create with different media.

Phonics

The children continue to have daily phonics sessions, through our Read Write Inc phonics programme. We will continue to track the children closely and assess them every half term.

Fred the frog helps us learn new sounds and blend them into words.

Reading Books

The children will continue to bring home a class library book of their choice for reading together with pleasure.

They will also bring home a phonics text. This may be a 'sound blending' book to support their blending. A 'Ditty sheet', 'Red Ditty Book' or a Green, Purple or other colour text which they will have read in class that week for consolidation. And when appropriate a further 'book bag book' of the same level to support their prediction skills and enjoyment of reading for themselves

Books will be sent home in book bags on a Thursday to be returned to school on a Monday. Thank you for your support in helping your child with their reading at home, please ask if you need any clarification or support with home reading,  

Maths

Our daily maths input this term extends the children's understanding of numbers from 5 up to10 by focusing on each number in depth. We will be focusing on developing our automatic recall of number bonds to 5 and some bonds to 10, including double facts. We will verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system.

We will use 10 frames, manipulatives from our environment (pebbles, pencils, sticks, cubes, buttons and anything else that can be moved!) to support a solid understanding of number to 10. This includes being able to spot a number without needing to count each item individually (subitising) within 5 and looking for patterns within larger numbers to help with accurate and speedy counting.

The children play a range of simple games to support their understanding, first with an adult and then with a friend during continuous provision.

There are lots of opportunities within continuous provision for children to explore shape, space and measure, including composing and decomposing shapes.

• Understanding the world

In summer term, we continue to examine seasonal change in the natural world from spring, taking care of the flowers we planted in spring and understanding what we need to do to look after them to help them to grow and flourish in the summer. Opportunities to explore the constrasting environments of beach/coastal in summer term and garden environments in spring term. 

We look at the passage of time through our monthly calendar and talk about what has happened in the past and the present. Exploration of different transport vehicles from the past and comparing them to the present is enjoyed during our Naughty Bus topic.

People in our local communities are explored in our You,Me,Everyone and RE learning during summer term, including those who can help us.

Through Language Angels, we continue to greet each other in Spanish, practise numbers 1-5 and some colours, as well as learn some familiar songs in Spanish. Eg Twinkle twinkle little star.

• Expressive Arts and Design

Buses, other vehicles and famous London landmarks provide inspiration at the start of summer term. As the term progresses, we will be examining our beautiful sea creatures and costal scenery. They will use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques to create pictures, props and models and begin to explain the process we have used. Our imagintions will also be stimulated as we develop our Role Play in many ways, from booking holidays/travelling to visiting 'aquariums' using what we know to express our ideas. 

Music

We will be following the Kapow scheme of work. The transport theme fits nicely with our texts themes to encourage the children think about how we can experiment with sound to represent transport and changes in temp and rhythm. The children will also take what they have learned into their play as they access the instruments out on our performance area and in their role play

We will also be learning to sing hymns in class in our prayer and liturgy and assemblies as we join KS1 or the whole school to worship through music and song.

A few reminders:

• Please apply long-lasting suncream to your child before they come to school as well as give them a sun hat to wear when outdoors during the day.
• Please send in a water bottle for your child, filled with water each day.
• We also ask that every item of clothing and footwear is labelled with your child's name.

Dates for your diary:

• Reception Sports Day - Wednesday 21st May 2-3pm (Parents/carers welcome)
• Family Book Buzz - Thursday 22nd May 9-9.30
• Finish at usual time for half term on Thursday 22nd May (Friday 23rd INSET)
• Return to school - Monday 2nd June 
• Finish for summer holidays - Friday 18th July- 2pm

If you need to speak to your child's teacher, please approach us on the playground and we can arrange a time. We would ask that you kindly wait until we have seen all of the children safely to their parent or carer before speaking to your teacher and we will be happy to chat. Alternatively, you may wish to ring the school office.

We can't quite believe we are now in our final term of the year. Here's to a fabulous term of learning and memories ahead of us!

Reception team

Mrs Bryce, Mrs O'Brien (Class RB)

Mrs Long, Mrs Bray (Class RL) 

Mrs Walmsley (mornings RB,RL)