Welcome to the Foundation Stage 

We are delighted to welcome you to our Foundation Stage class - this page will develop with more information over the school year.  We hope that you will find all the information here that you require if you have any suggestions we will be pleased to hear from you. 

Foundation Stage staff
Miss Wooding - Foundation Stage Lead Teacher 

Mrs. Jeffery - F1 Lead practitioner 

Miss Chapman - Foundation stage practitioner

Mr. Tatham - F2 Lead practitioner

Mrs. Sutherland - Foundation stage practitioner

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

Miss Wooding - lauraw@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Mrs Jeffery - samanthaj@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Mr Tatham - danielt@spmillend.herts.sch.uk

Next week in the Foundation Stage - 5th June 

Welcome back! I hope you all had a lovely half term holiday.

This half term our new topic is titled, 'I wonder what will happen next?' Over the next two weeks the children will be looking at poetry. They will be exposed to a variety of poems sharing their opinions and how each poem makes them feel. In Literacy, Mr Tatham will be teaching the children all about alliteration and rhyme and they will creating their own poems in small groups. In the afternoon the children will be going on a minibeast hunt and looking at their habitats. 

Book focus this week

Makaton sign of the week: run 

Prime areas

Gross motor skills - bikes, bean bag throw and obstacle course 

Weekly PE lesson - F1 and F2 -high, low, over and under and sports day skills 

Weekly Forest School lesson - Making a bug hotel 

Role play area - doctors surgery

Talking to their peers during snack time 

Playdough - rolling balls of playdough to show different quantities 

Busy Fingers -peg board pattern and threading bead patterns

Learning new vocabulary - Rhyming, Alliteration, Repetition, Poem, Sentence, Capital Letter, Full Stop, minibeasts, bugs, spider, worm, woodlouse, bee, butterfly, ladybird, beetle, leaves, flowers, area, gentle, look, find, explore, in, on, under, leaves, pebbles, wood, trees, flowers, plants, soil, insects, habitat, environment, nature, wildlife, observe, discover, reveal, uncover, investigate, below, underneath.

Large construction - create a house

Expressing ideas and holding conversation with teachers and peers

Specific Areas 

Mark making in the writing area  

Labelling members of my family and labelling features of the body.

Daily phonics 

Letter formation 

Dolls House - small world 

Snakes and ladders 

Literacy 

F1 - Nursery rhymes, story time, daily phonics, exploring mark-making, letter formation

F2 - Daily phonics, guided reading, phonics games, writing phase 4 tricky words 

Maths 

F1 - Maths -  This week, the children will build on their subitising skills. They will continue to use ‘perceptual’ subitising – instant recognition – by saying the number of sounds that they can hear, such as claps or drum beats, without needing to count. They will be encouraged to look closely at small quantities and observe whether the quantity has changed or only the arrangement.

F2 - Maths - This week’s materials continue to provide further subitising practice within familiar contexts, a new focus this week will be on subitising beads on a rekenrek. This key piece of equipment will allow the children to continue to develop their subitising skills as they explore the structure of small numbers, while building a foundation for further work in Year 1.

This week’s activities have a continued focus on using spatial language and visualisation. Encouraging the children to visualise and describe arrangements of objects will further deepen their number sense.

Have a lovely week

Miss Wooding and the FS team 

Parent Workshops 

Organisation

• F1 - PE - The children have PE on a Tuesday morning.
• F2 - PE - The children have PE on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Please can the children come into school wearing their PE kits.
• Please provide a water bottle daily so the child has access to water throughout the day.
• Children are provided with a free fruit snack daily.
• Please provide wellington boots that can remain in school. This is so the children can enjoy exploring the outdoor area in the wetter weather.
• Please bring a coat to school daily.

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 learning
• 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) - Every Friday the children will be bringing a reading book to enjoy at home. 5 – 10 minutes daily practise. They will also have a weekly phonics task based on previous and current learning. This needs 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.