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 (currently on maternity leave)

Miss Hey - Foundation Stage Teacher

Mrs. Sutherland - Foundation Stage Teacher

Miss Steel - Foundation Stage Teacher

Miss Boyce - Foundation Stage Practitioner  

Mr. Punio - Foundation Stage Practitioner

Miss Cella - Foundation Stage Practitioner

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

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

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

Mrs Steel - carolines@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 objects 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 

Foundation Stage Learning 

Week beginning - 10th March  

The children are loving our new topic focusing on space. The children have taken part in lots of different writing activities this week and they have loved role playing going into space in a spaceship. 

Thank you to all those who we met at Parents Evening last week, we are looking forward to seeing more of you this week.

Literacy 

The children will continue to explore the theme of space and our new book is Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers. This non-fiction book allows the children to explore what makes our planet and how we live on it.

Phonics 

F1 will continue working through 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 learning digraph 'ck'.

F2 - This week the children will be focusing on word with two or more digraphs . They will also be focusing on the tricky words, no, of, to, into, she, he and we.

Please practise these sounds and tricky words at home.

Continuous Provision 

Prime areas 

Roleplaying - space station

Sand - letters and magnets  

Fine motor - using tweezers to take loom bands out of water

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

Library area - Books all about space

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 - using lemon squeezers to squeeze water out of pompoms 

Playdough - can you explore the moon dough 

Specific areas 

Writing area - Write a caption for a picture    

F1 Writing area - making marks on foil using Q-tips 

Creative - Can you use the different shapes to make a name rocket

Painting area - papier mache planets 

water - use the spoons to scoop out the googly eyes  

Topic table - Space sensory tray 

Phonics table F2 - parking the cars in the correct letter parking space 

F1 Maths - Number 6

Have a lovely week 

The Foundation Stage Team