Pre-School - Hedgehog Class

Welcome to Hedgehog Class

Class teacher: Mrs Bolt

Teaching assistants: Chloe, Becky and Rebecca

 

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 3

All of the children in pre-school are learning to be increasingly independent in all areas of self-care. This will be from finding their own peg labels to self-registration. We will continue to focus on supporting the children’s personal, social and emotional needs, learning to share, take turns and be kind to each other and learn to accept others.  We will also continue to spend time remembering our class rules and talk about why they are important.  Lots of the activities are set up to encourage turn taking, independence and sharing as well as providing stimulation and challenge.

The children have now chosen their key adults who are focusing on building trusting relationships with each child.

This term we will be travelling ‘Around the World with the World Wildlife Fund’. We are looking forward to finding out about some amazing endangered animals. We are going to start by finding out about penguins. We will be sharing the story ‘Lost and Found’ with the children. This will help us think about how far away penguins live and what characteristics penguins have. We will then share ‘Albert LeBlanc’ to help us learn facts about Polar bears. We will talk about where they live (habitat) and create our own Artic play areas with some exciting freezing and thawing activities.

Over the term, we will learn how the animals move around the landscapes and in the ocean and think what they like to eat to survive. We will also use different maps to see where in the world the animals live and find about if they live on the land or in the sea. We will then move on to share the story ‘As Jealous as an Orangutan’ which will also help us think about our feeling and emotions as well as how the orangutans are feeling.

Later on in the term, we will share ‘Elmer on Stilts’ with the children which will help us learn more facts about elephants and how we can help them. All of this ‘finding out’ will be supported by talking about the role of WWF and how they help to protect endangered animals and what we can do to help. We will use live zoo webcams to show the children animals up close and follow the daily antics of some of the amazing endangered animals in the world.

We are also very much looking forward to welcoming some new children who re joining the class over the first few weeks, welcome to an exiting busy term ahead.

Mrs Bolt and the Pre School Team