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

Mrs Jeffery - Foundation Stage Teacher

Mrs. Sutherland - Foundation Stage Teacher

Miss Hey - Foundation Stage Practitioner

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

Mrs Jeffery - samanthaj@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 - 22nd April 

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. This Friday the Foundation Stage will be taking part in a Road safety Day. The even is called, 'Beep Beep Day'. It is to raise awareness in young children supporting them to keep safe in the cars and when walking along the road. This leaflet will provide you with more detail. 

Parent Information leaflet

Literacy

Our core book for this week is, Yucky Worms. This book is an informative text, perfectly pitched to our  inquisitive children in our Foundation Stage. The children will discover what worms eat, how they aerate and improve the soil and how they move around. They will discover how fascinating worm are and the books ends with extra information and experiments for budding wormologists.

Phonics 

F1 - Over the next term the children will be playing games to support their phonemic awareness. 

F2 - This week the children will start with phase 4 of the Little Wandle scheme. This week the children will be focussing on short vowels - CVCC and CCVC. They will be learning the tricky words, some, come, love and do.     In our daily lessons the children have started reading sentences and questions and they complete daily spellings. The children will also take part in 3 guided reading lesson throughout the week and on Friday they will bring this book home to share with you. 

Please continue practising the phase 3 sounds and the tricky words at home as often as possible.

Also please ensure you are recording your child's reading at home in their reading record.

Maths

F1 - This week F1 children will be learning about positional language. They will exploring resources by placing them in different positions. They will be using the mathematical language, on, under, in, out, behind and infront.

F2 - This week, the children will continue to develop their subitising skills in increasingly complex arrangements e.g. a set of 6 dots arranged in a structured die pattern that exposes the double-3 pattern is easier to recognise than a random arrangement of 6 dots. A key focus this week is to use the children’s developing understanding of doubles to support their subitising skills.

Makaton

Makaton sign of the week - dad

Continuous Provision 

Prime areas 

Roleplaying - Home - making dinner and washing up

Playdough - Can you make a spider? How many legs does a spider have? How will you make the legs? 

Fine motor - Attach the paper clip along the cardboard worm 

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

Library area - Books all about worms and minibeasts

Floor writing - chalk, water and large rollers/paintbrushes

Sharing a story - responding to and asking questions 

Learning new vocabulary related to our core book

Mark making - Exploring resources and being able to explain marks they have made

Fine motor - cutting along a line 

Specific areas 

Writing area - Write lists of minibeasts

Creative/painting area - Symmetrical butterflies 

Sand - use the tweezers to find worms 

Water - exploring capacity - full, empty, nearly full, nearly empty and half full 

F1 Maths - Count out a correct number of bugs and place them in a jar. 

Topic - Create a map for the worms - draw a tunnel system underground

Adult Led

F1 and F2 - This week the children will be taking part in road safety day. The children will be going taking part in a road survey. They will looking at traffic that travels past the school.

F1 will be comparing the colours of the cars that past and F2 will be recording the different types of transport.

I hope you all have a fantastic week

Mrs Harvey and the Foundation Stage Team