This is our EYFS related news. You can find this along with more EYFS year group related information on the EYFS year group page.
The children of EYFS had a brilliant time on their trip to Denton library. We listened to stories related to our “We are Explorers” theme, sang nursery rhymes and explored the library together.
A big thanks to our parent helpers who came along.
We have sent home application forms for you to complete if your child is not already a Tameside library member. It is fabulous and absolutely free!
As part of our learning about growing this half term, the children of F2 have been doing lots of growing, including growing cress. We have written instructions out for how to do this so that the nursery children can have a go at growing some too. We are keeping a cress diary to record its progress. Next, we are going to conduct some experiments to find out if cress can grow without water, or without light.
The children of EYFS all enjoyed our trip to the farm, to support our learning about Spring and growing.
F2 went on a local walk to find the places of work of different people who help us in our community in Denton. We used this information to make a map of our local area, showing the different places that we visited.
Our pupils in F1 and F2 were very excited to be visited by two PCSOs and a paramedic as part of their People Who Help Us topic. We got to hear all about what it is like to be a PSCO and a paramedic and explore both a police car and an ambulance!
Today in F2 we were lucky enough to have a visit from a science teacher. He talked to the children about science and we shared some amazing experiments. We have a class of happy, budding scientists!
After last week’s floating and sinking experiments, where we found out that the shape of an object affected whether it can float or sink rather than just the weight, this week we got creative. After looking at lots of different types of boats, we then designed and made our own boats for Noi’s Dad (from our Storm Whale in Winter story). Once we had made our boats, we tested them to check that they could float in our water area.
The children of F2 have loved using our crates to create a cosy new home for Stick Man and his family.
After reading a non-fiction book about winter and finding out that food is scarce for birds, the children of F2 have been making bird feeders for our outdoor area.
The children of F2 are really enjoying retelling the Stick Man story on our small world tray.
The children of F2 have had an amazing time exploring the winter weather. We have been comparing it to the season of Autumn and painting our own beautiful winter trees.
The children of F2 did an amazing job getting creative around the theme of the Nativity. We are artists!
The children of F2 all sang and danced their hearts out at Our First Nativity.
The children of F2 loved learning about how Diwali is celebrated. We even made our own Diva lamps from salt dough.
The children of F2 loved our visit to Denton Library. We can’t wait to go back again soon!
The children of F2 learned that on Remembrance Day, we are remembering the soldiers who fought in the war a long time ago. We created out own poppy art in the classroom, including a wreath to leave at the cenotaph on our class visit.
Bill the owl came to visit us in our classroom! We asked him lots of questions. We found out that he was bored of eating mice, so we have helped him by writing shopping lists using our phonic knowledge of different foods to try.
After going on an Autumn walk to explore the changes in our season, we created our own paintings of Autumn trees. We focused on our vocabulary words of roots, trunk and branches. We also did some colour mixing to create our own Autumnal shades.
The children of EYFS all enjoyed a fabulous trip to the library today which tied into our Explorer theme. The children of F1 sharing their Walking Through the Jungle book and F2 shared our “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. The librarian commented on what amazing storytellers that we all are! We really enjoyed our story sessions and exploring the books: we are already excited for our next visit.
Every child will come home with a bookmark and an invitation to join the library. The librarian also told us all about the summer reading challenge, where you can earn a shiny gold sticker for reading 6 books! Please head to the local library to join in.
As part of our explorers theme, the children of F2 have been on a minibeast hunt! We have been learning about different minibeasts and their habitats- we made predictions about which minibeasts that we may find in our school environment and where they might be. Then we went on our hunt! We captured our findings using the camera on our iPads.
After starting to learn about some of the features and artefacts in a church, today the children of F2 made a visit to our church to see them for ourselves. Fr Joe spoke to our children about the altar, the lectern and the bible, the candles, the tabernacle, the font, the holy water and the statues in the church. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to look around and to ask questions. F2 parents: can your child talk to you about what they saw in the church?
Wow, what an amazing EYFS sports day we had this morning. Each child competed in a running race, a javelin throw, a bean bag pick up race and an egg and spoon race. After practising hard in PE lessons, the smiles and enthusiasm today were fantastic to see! We hope that you all enjoyed it too.
The children of F2 have been practising their threading skills this week. Linked to our explorer topic and our work on minibeasts, we have been creating our own spiders and spider webs, threading wool through holes to create the webs.
The children of F2 have loved adding some new bedding plants into our outdoor environment this week. We have been excited to see some of our plants and bulbs sprouting up too. We know the names of the different parts of the plant, the job of the roots, and what plants need to grow.
We have also made observational drawings of our growing cress on the discovery table. It has changed so much! We are conducting a new experiment to find out what will happen to cress grown in different conditions. We have put some cress seeds in a dark box, giving them water but not light, then we have put some other cress seeds in a light spot, but not given them any water. We have made predications about what will happen to them.
In F2, we have been creating simple timelines using our class text “The Girl Who Planted Trees”. We looked at the how the mountain in the story changes over time, starting when the grandfather is a young child, then when the girl is young, then finally when the girl grows into a grandmother. We made pictures of the changing mountain and plotted them onto our timelines.
We have some exciting new visitors in our classroom: five tiny caterpillars! They are living on our discovery table and we are excited to watch them grow. Today, we found out about the life cycle of a butterfly and found out some interesting facts… Did you know that butterflies have no eyelids so cannot close their eyes? We also learned that butterflies have a long, curled up tongue called a proboscis that they use to drink the nectar. Our new vocabulary is nectar, proboscis, cocoon and chrysalis. Please talk to your children about our wriggly friends.
The children of F2 have been transfixed by the Easter story. This week, we talked about how Good Friday is the saddest day, but it is soon followed by the happiest day- Easter! The children understand our important symbol of the cross and it has been lovely to hear that many of our children have shared the Easter story at home with their parents. We have made beautiful Easter cards in class too: the children used pastels to create a cross shape, learning a smudging technique to create the effect.
As part of our new Spring and Growing theme, EYFS have had a fabulous morning down on the farm this week! We have been stroking rabbits, taking a tractor ride, meeting a range of animals, plus feeding goats and sheep. We talked about how baby animals are born in the Spring time and we got to meet a kid and a lamb. We have been learning the names of different baby animals in school this week and F2 have been writing about our farm trip.
As part of our People Who Help Us topic in EYFS, this week we had a special visit from some PCSOs. They talked about what they do in their special helping job and showed us their uniform and special equipment. Then, we got to see the police car, get inside and try the siren! We had the chance to ask them questions about their exciting helping job.
As part of our People Who Help Us topic, F2 have been learning about firefighters. This week, a mystery bag was left in our classroom full of equipment and we had to guess the job… and it was a firefighter’s bag! We have been learning about the important work that firefighters do. We have been lucky enough to meet some real firefighters, see their fire engine and have a go at spraying water from the hose! Back in class, we painted fire engines using photos for reference and drew and labelled firefighter equipment using phonic knowledge.
This half term, we started our new topic by sharing our home learning challenge: creating a junk model of a person who helps us. We loved sharing our models and talking about the different job roles and what they involve.
As part of our learning about The Storm Whale in Winter, we have been designing a new boat for Noi’s Dad. We began with some floating and sinking experiments, making predictions about different objects and testing them out. Then, we looked at photos of a variety of different boats and talked about their features. Next we designed our own boats, then made them using junk modelling. We are excited to see if our boats can float!
The children of F2 have been doing some fantastic investigating about ice. First we observed melting ice in our classroom: what it looked like, felt like, talking about how it was changing and what happened when we touched it with our hands. Then we received a letter from Stick Man: his three stick children were stuck in the ice! We planned our own experiment, thinking about what we know about how ice melts and planned three different places to try to melt the ice quickly. We then made predictions as to where the ice would melt fastest, giving reasons. We have also extended our learning by experimenting with freezing some other things such as coffee and yoghurt, predicting whether or not they would freeze.
4P have peer revising and editing their writing before they share their journey stories with F2 this week as part of their celebration of writing. The children ensured they followed our writing success criteria and made changes to their writing to make it entertaining for others.
In the first part of our Winter topic, the children of F2 loved engaging in our class text of Stick Man by Julia Donaldson. The children re-enacted the text on our small world table and look part in some creative Talk for Writing activities. We played freeze framing, where the children froze as various scenes in the story and we considered what the characters may be thinking. We also thought of questions that we would like to ask Stick Man if we ever met him… then low and behold, he visited our classroom and we interviewed him! We have retold the story using a story map, made Stick Man speech bubbles and created a new part of the story.
Our children have been learning all about the Chinese New Year. We found out about lots of different traditions, shared a Chinese New Year story, made Chinese New Year celebration cards, explored artefacts on our discovery table, role played the celebrations in our home corner, made Chinese lanterns, practised writing numbers in Chinese, sampled some delicious Chinese food at St Mary’s Chinese restaurant and watched some lion and dragon dancing.
Can your child tell you about how Chinese New Year is celebrated?
This week we have found out about winter from information books. We have been thinking about how some animals hibernate in the winter months and some birds migrate to warmer counties (we are doing a great job at learning this new vocabulary!). We talked about how it can be tricky for the remaining birds to find food in the winter months and we brainstormed ways in which we can help them. We settled on making birdfeeders for our outdoor area. The children followed the instructions well and we certainly enjoyed getting our hands messy! We should have some happy birds hanging around St Mary’s soon.
F2 children spread so much joy delivering their Christmas cards to the local community.
F2 performed an amazing musical version of the story of the nativity this week, singing and dancing beautifully. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and reminded us of the importance of the Christmas story. Well done F2!
In the final week of our Autumn topic in F2 , the children reflected on what they know about that changes that the season brings. They used natural objects to create transient art pictures of Autumn trees.
In F2 we are concluding our Autumn theme. We have found out lots of interesting facts about Autumn and this week, we explored Autumn in our local environment. We observed the changes in the trees and the weather, then recorded our observations through pictures.
We have been busy learning all about Autumn Animals in F1. We talked about the names of the animals and looked at photographs as well as learning a special new word… ‘hibernate’. Then in our construction area we built homes for our hedgehog friends. We talked about where hedgehogs would like to live and what they might need to build a cosy home including leaves and lots of food to keep the going throughout the Winter. We have also been busy exploring our Autumn animal small world tray and joining in with lots of imaginative play!
In F2, we have been learning about the festival of Diwali through videos, photos and books. We learned that Diwali is the festival of lights and is a very special time for some people around the world. We loved looking at the special traditional clothes that people wear to celebrate, watching the fantastic firework displays, seeing the beautiful mendi hand patterns, learning about the delicious food and dancing to the traditional music. We have explored these traditions through our play.
In F1 we have also been busy learning about Diwali, we read a book called ‘Little Glow’ which told us a story about this special celebration. We created Rangoli patterns, created firework play dough and paintings as well as making cards and our very own Diva lamps to keep at home. Great learning F1!
The children of F2 had a fantastic first half term: we have been becoming familiar with our school rules and routines… and most importantly, getting to know each other and making lots of lovely friendships. We started off our theme by exploring the story of Elmer, thinking about how we are all different and special. We retold the story through role play, then with a story map. Next, we created our own new characters for the Elmer story. We also reflected on what is the same and different about the members of our class and the things that make us special.
Next, we thought all about our brilliant bodies! We have learned lots of new vocabulary by naming our body parts, singing body songs and reciting body poems. We looked at the story of Funnybones too, making maps of the skeletons’ journey and suggesting new settings where the skeletons can go to frighten somebody! We have also been exploring our senses. We have been on a listening walk, tuning in to the wonderful world around us. We have explored our sense of sight through colour sorting and using kaleidoscopes and colour paddles, describing what we see. We used feely tubs to touch and describe materials of different textures and explored our sense of smell through herbs and mystery smelling pots! We have used our snack times to talk about our taste likes and dislikes.
The children have settled well and have enjoyed learning through play both indoors and outdoors. We have enjoyed lots of different number games to help us to recognise and order our numbers to 5, as well as representing 5 in different ways. When outdoors, the children have also loved dancing on our stage area and creating fabulous dens with our crates and blankets: they can be the perfect spot to share a book with a friend!
In our first half term, we focused on God’s wonderful world. We learned that God made the whole world and everything in it, including us! We explored how God made us all different and special. We have made paintings and zigzag books of some of God’s fantastic creations, as well as considering ways in which we can look after God’s world, such as keeping the seas clean, caring for plants and animals, plus recycling. We have said prayers together and sang songs to thank God for all that he has made: we continue to focus on this in our collective worship in November.
In F2 we are learning all about minibeasts! We have talked about different minibeasts, observing the details in photos and making pictures of them. We have been solving minibeast “What am I?” puzzles and writing our own. We have been finding information from non-fiction books and learning lots of different things. We have started to learn about different habitats and we have made a bug hotel for minibeasts outdoors. We are looking forwards to doing lots of minibeast hunting around our school grounds!
Throughout the first half term in EYFS we have thought about the topic of “Ourselves”. We began by thinking about how we are all different and special through the story of Elmer. Next we thought about our bodies through the story of Funnybones. Finally, we followed the children’s interests (they are animal mad!) by exploring the story of Dear Zoo. We have also been exploring our similarities and differences and exploring our five senses. Most importantly, we have been getting familiar with our school rules and routines, getting to know each other and making good friends. We are looking forward to exploring our new Autumn theme during this half term.
As part of our People Who Help Us topic in F2, we have been learning all about the police. We have used the computer and non-fiction books to find out information about the job of the police. Then in our class we have roleplayed being police in our class police station and in our outdoor area. Darcie has been lucky enough to visit a real police helicopter with her Dad! What an amazing experience, we have loved hearing about it in class.
As part of our People Who Help Us topic, we have been thinking about the people and jobs in our community and the different ways that they help us. We decided to make thank you tokens for some of the people that are doing jobs that we are really grateful for such as doctors, nurses, fire fighters, police and lollipop people. Ellen’s thank you token for nurses is now proudly displayed in the entrance of Manchester Royal Infirmary.
We are Super Friends!
In PSHE this week we have been thinking all about friendship: we are Super Friends at St Mary’s School! First we thought about the superheroes that we know and the powers that they have. Next we thought about the superpowers that we need to be super friends: powers such as kindness, sharing and looking after each other. Of course, no superhero would be complete without a costume. Our home learners both at school and at home then had lots of fun designing our Super Friend masks.
The children in EYFS have started our new topic: People Who Help Us. In F2, we have begun by thinking about the people who help us both at home and at school, before we move onto our local community. This week, our learners at school and at home have loved using their imaginations to make models of people who help them. What fabulous artists we are!
In EYFS we have been learning all about the festival of Diwali. We have watched a video on CBeebies about how a little girl celebrates this special time with her family. We also looked at some pictures about found out different ways in which Diwali is celebrated. Children in F1 have made their own Diva lamps which they took home with a special candle to light. Also the children have explored some sparkly Diwali themed water and mark making activities. They have made Diwali cards and designed rangoli patterns. They have also drawn Henna tattoos on the handprints and designed a Diva lamp on purple mash too. Outside we listened to some traditional Diwali music and the children played along with the instruments and did some firework dancing. Children in F2 recorded different ways of celebrating Diwali through pictures and did some fantastic firework dancing on our outdoor stage to some Diwali music.
The children in F1 and F2 have been learning about Remembrance Day this week. We found out about the soldiers who fought in the war over 100 years ago to protect our country. We learnt that poppies grew on the battlefields when the fighting stopped. Our classrooms were filled with poppy art on 11th November: we make poppy pictures using oil pastels, poppy necklaces by using holepunches and threading onto wool, poppy paint printing pictures, poppy transient art and poppy pictures using Purple Mash. It has been lovely to hear from parents how much the children have enjoyed sharing their new knowledge with them at home.
What a fun and positive start to the year it has been for F2. We have spent the first few weeks getting to know each other and familiarising ourselves with our rules and routines. We began with the text of Elmer: focusing on how we are all different and special. We acted out the story in different ways, thought of some super describing words for Elmer and retold the story using a story map.
Next we started to learn about our bodies. We have really enjoyed the story of Funnybones and have been retelling it in our small world area. We have been making skeletons, labelling bodies with our new phonics skills, making maps of Funnybones’ journey as well as doing the skeleton dance! Outdoors, we have been moving our bodies in lots of different ways whilst playing with our actions dice.
We have been exploring our senses in our discovery area. We have done some fantastic sorting whilst thinking about the sense of sight as well as exploring torches and kaleidoscopes. We have compared and described the feel and texture of different objects using our feely tubs. We have thought about hearing whilst experimenting with and describing the sounds of different musical instruments, plus explored taste with a delicious fruit tasting session. What a busy class!
Before school closed children in F1 took home a seed and planted it. Ellen has sent in this photo of hers which is now 45cm high! Each morning she is counting the leaves t see if it has grown. also, Lottie has been enjoying reading about Jack and the Beanstalk, rearranging jumbled sentences, making story maps and written her own idea for the story. Finally, Frankie has been acting Goldilocks and the Three Bears, putting them to bed and feeding them porridge and looking at different sized chairs, beds and bowls.
More brilliant work has been sent in this time a wonderful lego rainbow to thank all of the key workers and brilliant lego work to go along with F1’s story of the Hungry Caterpillar
Home learning for all year groups is now available on the class pages. Some of the work may need downloaded to look at but the majority should be able to be completed within the children’s home learning books.
For maths there are also links to both the Power Maths scheme of work which we follow in school and has been adapted for use at home and also the White Rose Hub which is very similar, easy to use and navigate.
Please continue to use Times Tables Rockstars (we can see who has been using it regularly) and reading on a daily basis.
Finally, don’t forget to keep fit and active with PE with Joe Wicks each morning.
The children of F2 have had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day, what a fantastic array of characters! The children loved sharing their costumes and favourite stories.
We have had a range of fun activities running throughout the day. Every class in the school had a special story time, where another teacher from our school visited our class to read one of their favourite stories. Mrs Farrell visited our class and shared a fantastic story with us. We also joined in with the whole school silent read in the afternoon, where we dropped everything, sat down and read some of our favourite books. Even the teachers brought their books to school!
In our classroom the children enjoyed several fun activities. We designed our own bookmarks, created our own character masks and wrote about our favourite characters. We also enjoyed some drama as we acted out the characters in our current class book, Commotion in the Ocean.
We love books at St. Mary’s!
This week in F2 we had a phonics “stay and learn” session. The children were focusing on the ‘oa’ sound. We played some games to practise reading ‘oa’ words and even had a special visit from our friend the Wise Wizard, who we are teaching to read!
For those unable to attend, a handout has been sent home which explains how we teach phonics at St Mary’s and how you can support your child at home.
As part of our winter topic, the children of EYFS have been investigating ice. In nursery the children have enjoyed playing with ice in the water trays and the small world area, we even tried some frozen paints! We used describing words looked at how the ice was changing throughout the day. The children of F2 have been very hands on too. We have investigated freezing and melting, describing the changes that we have seen and thinking about why the ice is melting. We than experimented with freezing different things such as orange juice and jelly to see if those would freeze too.
Then disaster struck: we found three Stick Men stuck inside blocks of ice! We thought carefully about how to melt the ice to rescue them. We knew that we needed heat, so placed one on a radiator, one under a light and one outside. The children predicted which block of ice would melt first. We are happy to say that all of the Stick Men were eventually freed!
As part of our winter topic, we have been learning all about Stick Man by Julia Donaldson. We retold the story using role play and small world characters. We made maps of all of the places that Stick Man has visited and made our own speech bubbles showing things that Stick Man might say. On our creative table, we got busy making our own Stick Man hats to use for role play outside, as well as making Stick Man characters and split pin Stick Men. In literacy we made a Stick Man story map and made up our own actions to retell the story. Then something terrible happened… Stick Man went missing again! We came up with lots of describing words and made our own ‘Lost’ posters to display in our school.
We have been thinking about the author Julia Donaldson and all of her fabulous stories. We have shared lots of them in class and gone on Julia Donaldson book hunts in our homes. What is your favourite Julia Donaldson story?
Today we have been learning all about the Chinese New Year. We found out about the different ways that Chinese people celebrate the New Year and listened to the story about how the different years got their animal names: this is the year of the rat! In our class we have looked carefully at different Chinese artefacts: the children particularly liked the red envelopes which are given as gifts with money inside. In our maths area we have been having a go at writing some Chinese numbers. We have been very creative, making dragon masks, Chinese red lanterns and Happy New Year cards. We also enjoyed some Chinese food tasting. The jury is still out on sweet and sour sauce, but the prawn crackers were a big hit! Happy Chinese New Year to all who are celebrating.
Today our class had a wonderful visit to Denton library. We listened to stories and had a chance to look at their fantastic selection of picture books. We learnt about library books and how to scan books out of the library. The children loved the visit, especially choosing their favourite books and talking about why they liked them. They are very keen to visit again soon! Every child will come home with an application form to join Tameside Libraries. If you wish for your child to join, please visit during the staffed hours (please see photos for times) and they will be signed up straight away and able to borrow lots of exciting new books. Happy reading!
Our current topic in F2 is winter. We have been reading a non-fiction book about winter and also used the internet to find winter facts. We have been looking for signs of winter in our school environment and comparing winter to the other seasons. You can help your child in their learning by talking to them about signs of winter: perhaps you could go for a winter walk or explore your back garden. How does it look different to the Autumn time?
One thing that we learnt from our non-fiction book is that birds struggle to find food in the winter time as the trees are bare and also the ground can freeze, making finding worms quite tricky. We followed a set of instructions to make our very own bird feeders to help the birds in our school grounds. We used the words ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘next’ and ‘finally’ in our instructions. We all had fun getting very messy! We hope that the birds will enjoy visiting our school this winter.
In maths we have been looking at splitting 5 in different ways using objects. The two key words that we have been using are “whole” and “part”. To begin with, we had a teddy bears’ picnic in our classroom with fruit! We put 5 pieces of fruit (the whole) into a hoop, then looked at different ways that we could split the whole into two different parts for two hungry bears e.g (five and zero, four and one, three and two…). We have continued to explore this in our maths work using different contexts, using cubes and pictures to represent different objects.
You can continue to have fun with this at home during your daily routine: how many different ways can you split five grapes or five toothbrushes into two parts?
Here in F2 we have had an exciting present in our classroom from Santa himself – a special book called The Christmas Bear by Ian Whybrow. In the story, The Christmas Bear gets left behind in Santa’s workshop and has to travel many miles to catch up with him in his sleigh. The children have made maps to help the Christmas Bear to find his way. We also decided to design and and make some new vehicles for the Christmas Bear so that he would never be left behind again!
We have also been learning about the journey of a letter. We learned about what happens when we post a letter or a card and have enjoyed being postal workers in our post office role play area. We decided to take a trip to our local post box to post our vehicle designs to Ian Whybrow to pass on to the Christmas Bear.
