Dear Parents and Carers,

We hope you have had a lovely Easter break with the children and they are now all ready for the half term ahead? We can’t believe we are into the Summer term already, two terms down and one to go!

This half term our book focus is ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. This book provides a lot of opportunities for the children to explore growth and new life through different areas of the curriculum. Alongside Jack and the Beanstalk we will also be looking at books such as Jack and the Jellybean Stalk, Grandad’s Secret Giant, Jim and the Beanstalk, Waynetta and the cornstalk and Trust me, Jack’s Beanstalk Stinks!’. The children will be looking at similarities and differences in the different narratives.

Shown below are some ideas for each of the areas of learning within Foundation Stage, these may change as we follow the children’s interests and ideas.

Communication and Language.

The children will use talk for writing skills to retell stories and talk about feelings and their own ideas. We will be looking at how the characters in the different stories feel and how we make others feel. Did the characters do the right things? Did they follow the rule?

Encouraging discussion during circle time and giving the children opportunities to re-enact the stories through role play, dressing up as the characters. Changing the outdoor Police Station into a garden centre. The children will listen to each other, have opportunities to express themselves and answer ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions.

Personal Social and Emotional Development.

The children will take part in various listening and attention activities. They will discuss the character of the giant and talk about why he behaved the way he did? How would the children feel if Jack took their belongings? We will encourage the children to think about the story from a different perspective and take into account one another’s ideas and feelings, forming positive relationships. We will create a friendship beanstalk together as a whole class adding a leaf every time someone is a kind friend.

Physical Development.

Our topic this half term is team games and the children will have a weekly PE lesson with Mr Finlay. Activities will inspire friendship, teamwork and personal development. The children will develop their throwing and catching skills negotiating space successfully when playing racing and chasing games with other children, adjusting speed or changing direction to avoid obstacles. We will also be discussing the importance of staying safe and being healthy and the effect exercise has on our bodies.

The children will also have daily access to the outdoor provision, were they will have opportunities to balance, and climb, as well as ride bikes, throw balls and bean bags. They can also have fun in the mud kitchen and water play. Please see the attached link to help with ideas for getting the children active outside of school.

https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Documents/children-under-5-walking.pdf

Literacy.

There will be lots of opportunity for the children to apply skills previously learned independently. Writing their names, captions and sentences. They will be writing for different purposes, lists, letters, instructions etc. They will also continue with their daily phonics and reading individually and in groups. The children will be writing their favourite parts of the traditional story ’Jack and the Beanstalk’, writing post cards to Jack’s Mum from Jack, writing instructions on how to plant a bean, character profiles, bean diary’s as well as writing their daily news.

Every Tuesday afternoon Foundation Stage will have a visit from the Reading Dog. This provides opportunities for the children to develop their reading skills and use their phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately.

Maths.

This half term we will be looking at measure using standard and non-standard measure such as lego, hands, feet, unifix cubes and bar modelling. As well as consolidating on all aspects of Number, counting, number recognition, one more and one less and combining two groups of objects.

Playing games during self-registration and within Foundation Stage as well as Teacher lead input. The children will begin to solve their own problems and use everyday maths who has the biggest shoe size, who has the longest bean plant, creating pictograms to display results.

Understanding of the World.

This half term we will continue to look at Spring and how the environment has changed over Autumn, Winter. We will re visit Botanic Park to look at the trees, flowers and the grass. Can the children tell us about the changes in the environment since our Autumn walk? Why have they changed?

We will have some very special visitors in the Foundation Stage including chicks, caterpillars, butterflies and possibly tadpoles. The children will develop their knowledge and understanding on how to look after and care for these animals and mini beasts looking closely at their life cycles and habitats. We will use ipads, macbooks, smartboards and non - fiction books to find out information.

Linking to Jack and the Beanstalk the children will be planting their own bean plant following simple step instructions. They will begin to understand what a plant needs to grow through a variety of science experiments and will record the progress of their plant using a bean diary.

The children will look at special celebrations: St George’s Day, Ascension Day and Pentecost, How do different people celebrate?

We will taste different foods, talk about family customs and routines and look at how we have similarities and differences with our peers.

Expressive Arts and Design.

Art will be a focus both indoor and outdoor again this half term. The children will look at the season of Spring; do we use the same colours to paint Spring pictures as we did with Winter.

In Foundation Stage there will be Spring flowers, animals and mini beasts for the children to make observational drawings, using pastel, paint and different materials. They will explore variety of textures to create simple representations of new life

The children will use musical instruments to retell different stories exploring sound, pitch, rhythm and volume. They will tell the story Jack and the Beanstalk using musical instruments such as chime bars for climbing up and down the beanstalk, drums for the giant and rain makers for the cloud. The children will also learn a variety of songs linking to our book focus, spring and new life.

I hope the children are as excited as us to get started this half term,

Kind Regards

The Foundation Stage Team