Pre-School - Hedgehog Class

Welcome to Hedgehog Class

Class teacher: Mrs Bolt

Teaching assistants: Chloe, Becky and Sophie

 

This year, we have a wonderful, light,airy and engaging environment for the children to play, learn and explore in. We have lots of exciting new resources for the children to share and a wonderful new interactive whiteboard to enhance learning opportunities. Our continuous provision -the space where they use and explore independently, provides the children with endless opportunities to develop their skills in each of the seven areas of the EYFS.

Children in pre-school learn through:

Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning.

• Playing and exploring- children investigate and experience things, and 'have a go'
• Active Learning- children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• Creating and thinking critically- children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

We have created lovely, calm areas to explore mark -making and our senses as well as purposeful zones to further develop specific skills.

Term 5

We are looking forward to a very busy term with ‘Supertato’ and his friends.

Through sharing the 'Supertato' stories with the children, there will be lots of opportunities to explore different foods, growing and gardening, size, shape and texture and messy play. We will share various different themed ‘Supertato’ stories to introduce concepts, tools and resources as well as learning to use existing materials and tools in different ways. The children will have opportunities to choose where they want to play, learn and explore and how they want to further develop their own ideas, imagination and dramatic play.

Outdoor learning

We will be spending lots of time outdoors gardening, growing, watering and playing. We do get messy when hunting for bugs, catching worms and planting seeds. We are very active in the garden area so please ensure that your child has sensible, safe shoes for running, playing on bikes and trikes and kicking balls. Please also ensure that you provide named spare clothes in their bags in case we get really messy.

Weather

We will be spending lots more time in our outdoor environment so please ensure your child attends pre-school with a sun hat and sun cream daily and a raincoat and welly boots!

‘Widit’ in Pre-school

We use ‘widgit’ signs and symbols to help us learn the new words and vocabulary in our stories. These are published on the website but please ask us if you would like a copy in your home language as we really value dual languages and recognise the importance of you being able to share this learning with you at home.

Makaton

Miss Potts comes to play at Pre-School on a Monday and Friday to show us how to use Makaton. This is to help us express and communicate our wants and needs. Last term, the whole class learnt how to say yes please and no thank-you, say what fruits they like to eat and make choices independently using their Makaton skills.

Phonics fun

In Pre-school this term, we will continue to engage in fun activities to support our phonics development. We are really focusing on our speaking and listening skills, learning to distinguish the sounds we hear, patterns of speech and sounds of speech. We are having great fun using our bodies to make sounds like clapping, stomping, patting, rubbing and clicking our fingers. We are also learning to do this loudly, softly, fast and slowly!

What a busy term we have ahead of us!

Mrs Bolt and the Pre-school team