Welcome to the Foundation Stage 

We are delighted to welcome you to our Foundation Stage class and look forward to working with you and your child.

Foundation Stage staff
Mrs Harvey - Foundation Stage Teacher and EYFS lead

Miss Hey - Foundation Stage Teacher

Mrs. Sutherland - Foundation Stage Teacher

Miss Boyce - Foundation Stage Practitioner  

Mr. Punio - Foundation stage practitioner

If you have any queries or concerns across the year please contact a member of the Foundation Stage team.

Mrs Harvey - lauraw@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Miss Hey - ashleyh@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Mrs Sutherland - hannahs@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Foundation Stage Vision

For children; pupils who are happy, enthused, curious, safe, have a love of learning. We cater for our diverse demographic by giving all children what they need including a range of experiences, books and vocabulary to develop the breadth and depth of their knowledge. We want our children to leave Early years as well-rounded individuals with an understanding of our school values, SMSC and British values as well as strong social skills and confident in their wellbeing.

For staff; we want our staff to be skilled and confident to carry out our vision through having a passion for Early Years and wanting the best for our pupils. We want our staff to feel confident to have some autonomy to try new ideas and get involved in decisions and planning around the children’s learning and interests. Staff should be knowledgeable about all areas of learning to enable them to push learning forwards ensuring all children make good or better progress. 

For environment; We want our environment to offer a wide range of resources to support the development of cultural capital, awe and wonder and learning opportunities. Our environment is enticing, reflects the various cultures within our community. We have a strong focus on communication so our environment is print rich, interactive, engaged, changes regularly to reflect the children needs and interests as well as promoting independence.       

For standards; We aim to offer the best standards possible in early reading and maths supporting all children to make good or better progress. We have designed our curriculum to ensure we are striving for the best for all children based on their start points through regularly challenging and scaffolding their learning to enable them to be ready for next stage in their education.

Foundation Stage Aims

• To provide an opportunity for children to reinforce skills, reflect and build upon their learning in the classroom.

• To further foster the partnership between home and school for the benefit of your child

• To involve parents (and other adults) in pupils’ work

• To encourage the development of independent study

• To encourage the development of pupils’ organisational skills, self-discipline and confidence

Our expectations

Please note: These expectations will be added and built on throughout the year as and when the children are ready for them. 

• Children are encouraged to find out information, bring in books or object of interest or a similar related task pertaining to the focus topic being carried out.

• Library  – All the of the children in our Foundation Stage will be bringing home library books on a Friday to be returned the following week on a Wednesday

• F2 (4-5 year olds) - In Autumn 2 your child/children will be bringing a reading book to enjoy at home. 5 – 10 minutes daily practise. This will be sent out on a Friday and to be returned on a Wednesday.

• Tapestry – sharing with you what the children do at school as well as you sharing with us what you do at home together.

• Independence -encouraging the children to do things independently is really important as they move through the school. This includes getting dressed, cutting food, and putting coats and shoes on.

Foundation Stage Learning 

Week beginning - 2nd December  

For those parents in the Nursery class, please remember that the application process in open now to apply for your Reception place September 2025. We have a open morning coming up over the next few weeks so please remember to book a place to find out more information about F2 and our application process.

Literacy 

Next week F1 and F2 will be continuing to look at a different type of celebrations and the children will be studying the book 'Happy Birthday Maisy'.

This story will allow children to explore the feelings and excitement associated with celebrations and birthdays. It will enable children to identify the differences in celebrations. Over the next two weeks the children will learn to:

▪ To strengthen relationships and develop viewpoint

▪ To allow children to express their own thoughts and feelings about what makes them feel special

▪ To explore different celebrations and how this can vary between cultures

▪ To explore and develop strategies to support early reading of whole words and printed texts

▪ To orchestrate cues to learn to read print independently in familiar and supportive contexts

▪ To mark make and write for meaning and purpose in a variety of narrative and non-narrative forms

▪ To make all children feel valued and included by exploring a text and themes to which they can relate 

Phonics 

F1 will begin the foundations for phonics which helps to develop children’s phonological and phonemic awareness through fun, engaging games and nursery rhymes. There are two aspects to Foundations for Phonics: Rhyme time and Tuning into sounds. Rhyme time explores rhyme to build up a bank of shared language, develop children’s understanding of the world and familiarity with the sounds in words. Tuning into sounds teaches phonological and phonemic awareness through games. This week the children will be looking more closely at the sound, 'p'.

F2 - This week the children will be recapping the sounds they have learnt this half term. They will learning to read words with s /s/ added at the end (hats sits) and words ending s /z/ (his) and with s /z/ added at the end (bags). They will also be learning the new tricky words, we, be and me

Please practise these sounds and forming these letters at home, you received a form on Friday which explained all the sounds and letter formation rhymes.

Maths

F1 - This week F1 will be continuing to learn all about 2D shapes. They will learning the shape names and then exploring the shape properties. 

F2 - This week, the children will continue to engage with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. Adults will need to continue to name the objects being counted to emphasise the numerosity of the set, e.g. Would you please collect 6 crayons and bring them to me? The children will revisit the concept of 1:1 correspondence by making sure that they match collections of objects to their representations.

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Makaton

Makaton sign of the week - eat

Continuous Provision 

Prime areas 

Roleplaying - Christmas post office

Sand - Windmill and cups 

Fine motor - tweezers and snow balls  

Gross Motor - Riding bikes, obstacle course, prams, water painting 

Library area - Books all about winter and Christmas 

Sharing a story - Responding to and asking questions 

Learning new vocabulary related to our core book

Mark making - Making marks using chalk, rollers and large paintbrushes

Fine Motor outdoors - Tap a shape

Playdough - Use the resources to create a Christmas picture

Specific areas 

Writing area - Write a Christmas list   

F1 Writing area - Bauble tracing 

Creative - Decorate a Christmas tree 

Painting area -Christmas stencils   

water - fishing lines and magnetic letters  

Topic table - Matching the Christmas picture to its shadow

Topic table F2 - Sorting letters in your name

F1 Maths - ABCABC patterns  

I hope you all have a fantastic week

Mrs Harvey and the Foundation Stage Team