Early Years (Nursery & Reception) 2024-2025
Welcome to Early Years, Mrs Marsden is the class teacher, supported by Mrs Manners and Miss Forrest.
Mrs Chisholm covers PE and Mrs Lewis covers RE in teachers planning, preparation and administration time.
Please see below for our long term plan for this year and our half termly topic letters alongside our timetable.
We had a great first week back, making new friends and getting used to new routines!
Please watch our video that shares our first forest school lesson of the academic year. We had great fun recapping and learning rules, bug collecting and playing with our friends.
Reception children have started their Read, write inc sessions and we have been busy practising letter formation, recognising initial sounds and beginning to blend CVC words too.
In Maths our topic has been making a match and sorting. We have had fun doing lots of practical activities such as - pair games, finding a match and sorting monsters in different ways.
We have had fun problem solving while making water tracks with our friends and practising key fine motor skills when using tweezers and completing cutting skills tasks.
We were really lucky to look at a boys and a girls evacuee suitcase from the Bailiffgate Museum in Alnwick, we shared this as part of our learning about the war in the lead up to Remembrance Day. The children loved looking at them and talking about the items and what it would be like for an evacuee.
We have been busy learning about feelings and how we might feel when things happen. We made our own emoticon faces with playdough, what great fun. Some of us made cool faces, happy faces and sad faces!
We have a Forest School session every week and we have had lots of fun so far this half term. Here we are collecting bugs and making spiders using conkers.
We made our own Diya Lamps for Diwali and enjoyed decorating them with bright colours and glitter for the festival of light.
Our chosen class charity was the Alnwick District Food Bank. We are thankful for all the donations from families across school and the food bank were very grateful. Thank you!
We loved welcoming families to our whole school Harvest service at Church before we broke up for half term, we did a marvellous job singing the song - Big red combine harvester.
We were so thankful to Mrs Abercrombie who launched our week of visitors to our class to talk to us about her job as a doctor. Our topic is when I grow up I’d like to be a …. So we are looking at jobs some of our families have. Mrs Abercrombie brought in some poorly bears - one had a cut, a poorly tummy, ear and cough. We got to use stethoscopes, thermometers, bandages, urine testing strips and much more to help the bears to get better. By the time they left with Mrs Abercrombie they were a lot better after all our mini doctors had worked their magic on them. What a fun way to learn about the role of a doctor in such a practical way.
Another visitor to talk to us about her job was Mrs Moralee to tell us about her role at the Bosk, holiday cottages and as a celebrant for weddings, we found out that Mrs Moralee is very busy and sometimes has 54 beds to change as well as 12 cottages to get ready for new guests as well as the bosk with its swimming pool, restaurant, games room and upcoming sauna!
Mr Drummond came to see us and talk about his job as a farmer. He told us how he has cows and sheep on his farm but he also talked about where our food comes from and that most of the foods we had for our breakfast had actually come from a farm. He showed us a cow passport as well as tags and explained that each animal has these so that they can be identified. He also showed us some sheep’s wool and we talked about things that are made from this. He told us about how farmers jobs are to grow crops and feed the animals but also look after hedgerows and grasslands to help wildlife such as bugs as well as deer, stoats, rabbits etc! Farming is a big job!
Mrs Osborne visited us to talk to us about her job as an emergency healthcare assistant. Mrs Osborne told us a story about - my mummy the paramedic, as she helps the paramedics and drives the ambulances! Mrs Osborne even brought a toy ambulance in for us to look at and an interactive picture and videos showing a real ambulance. We are going to enquire about getting a visit to school from the ambulance service. We got to use some things that Mrs Osborne brought in such as a mask and oxygen on the dummy and the stethoscope. Mrs Osborne also talked about the importance of knowing the number to call for an ambulance and our addresses in case we ever need to call.
Mrs Ling who is a veterinary nurse came to speak to us today. She told us all about her job and how she works while we sleep sometimes. She said not only does she look after peoples pets, she also teaches their owners how to care for them too. She brought in some pretend patients and we enjoyed listening to their chests and tummies. We saw some x rays too and we loved getting to try on a gown, cap and gloves. Great fun.
We were very lucky to be invited into Mrs Arkle’s kitchen,she told us about all her job as a cook and she was busy making the Christmas pudding today and we put all our wishes into it too. Mrs Arkle gave us all a chef hat to wear too. We enjoyed finding out about the jobs she has to do.
We wore wellies to school to support our British farmers and the farming community on 19th November.
During road safety week we learned the green cross code as part of a fun song and then we used the road on our playground to practise crossing safely, we even created our own zebra crossing and had our own vehicles to stop, look and listen for. A fun way to learn about the importance of keeping safe.
Reception visited St Bartholomew’s with Rev Rich as part of our RE learning journey. He showed us what happens when a baby is baptised and told us about the meaning of the special words that are said and the things that are used. He also shared with us the special preparations that are being made to get ready for Christmas and told us how Christmas will be celebrated by the local Church community. As a special treat we even got to ring the Church bell.
oday we had a special visit from a Manners wagon, Mr Manners brought us a wagon in to have a look at and have a sit in, the children had some great questions - how many wheels does it have? How long does it take to drive to London? Etc. we loved sitting in the drivers seat and some of us had a peep of the horn
We were kindly gifted some advent calendars for each and every child from a local computing business. Thank you!
Our reception children are busy learning their letter sounds and are now able to segment to spell new words. We have been busy learning about jobs and one of our stories was Mog and the vet, we wrote about Mog in the story.