EYFS

Teachers – Miss R. Peterson and Miss T. Twining

Early Years Practitioner – Mrs K. Rayner

Early Years Practitioner – Mrs S. Milner

Teaching Assistant – Miss Y. Ahmed

Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein

Children start their school journey at Saint Augustine Webster Catholic Voluntary Academy, in the Early Years Foundation Stage. The unit has provision for Nursery children, who we call the Bumblebees and Reception children, who we call the Ladybirds.

Children can start in Nursery the term after they turn 3 years old. You can complete a ‘Registration of Interest’ form – available from the school office – as soon as your child is born! When your child is ready to start Nursery, we use this information to contact you to organise the transition process. Further information about funded places for 3 and 4 year olds, can be found following this link, Funded early education for three and four year olds – North Lincolnshire Council (northlincs.gov.uk)

Children can start in Reception during the academic year when they turn 5 years old; applications for starting school are made online Apply for a school place in North Lincolnshire – North Lincolnshire Council (northlincs.gov.uk)

The Foundation Stage builds upon the children’s previous experiences and learning within their own family and the wider community. We have a lengthy transition process that allows us to build strong foundations with you and your child, helping to create a happy and safe place for them to transfer to when starting their new journey in to school.

The school follows the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. A detailed read for parents/carers can be found What-to-expect-in-the-EYFS-complete-FINAL-16.09-compressed.pdf (foundationyears.org.uk)

Within the early years, three areas are fundamentally important for building a foundation for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, forming relationships and thriving. These are called the prime areas:

  1. communication and language
  2. physical development
  3. personal, social and emotional development

Our learning is largely based around play – ‘PLAY IS WORK AND WORK IS PLAY’. We aim to ensure children feel safe and happy to enable confidence, independence and the ability to learn and grow.

As a setting, we must also support children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied. The specific areas are:

  1. literacy
  2. mathematics
  3. understanding the world
  4. expressive arts and design

It is our intention to encourage our children to become independent, resilient learners, who love to explore the world around them, seeking challenges through exploration and curiosity whilst showing a ‘can do’ attitude and ultimately developing a lifelong love of learning.

R.E. 

Religious Education is a core subject taught throughout our school, starting in the Nursery through to Year 6, and underpins the heart of our teaching. We are a Catholic school and teach the word of God using the ‘Come and See’ curriculum.

The topics we are following during the Lent term are Celebrating, Gathering and Growing.

P.E. 

Children must come to school wearing their P.E. kit on P.E. days. Details about the uniform for P.E. can be found on the Piota app or please ask the team for a copy of what children should wear.

Children in Nursery must wear a plain white t-shirt for P.E. with their P.E. uniform.

Nursery have P.E. on a Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon.

Children in Reception will be part of the main school house teams and will wear their house colour t-shirt. The class teacher will email you details of what colour house your child is in. Colour P.E. t-shirts can be purchased from Shah’s clothing shop.

Reception have P.E. on a Wednesday afternoon.

IMAGINATION LIBRARY

‘Imagine what a difference it would make if every child loved to read?’

(Taken from www.earlyreadingconnects.org.uk)

All of the children in our early years setting benefit from the ‘North Lincolnshire Imagination Library Scheme’. We ensure through our transition process, that we have every family signed up. To further the enjoyment of the book, that the child receives FREE, every month to their home, we share exciting resources that include activities, via our online learning platform – ‘Tapestry’. These fabulous activity sheets are made by the North Lincolnshire Early Years Team. They are always welcoming feedback and any support linked to the Imagination Library.

Please feel free to email bumblebees@staugustinewebster.net or reception@staugustinewebster.net should you have any further ideas about this amazing scheme.

How we implement the scheme in school:

  • The books are shared in school every month with enthusiasm and focus.
  • An Imagination Library table is placed in provision to promote the stories.
  • Our reading den encourages and promotes a love of reading using a range of resources that may include: story stones, story teller’s basket, masks, puppets and props to engage children to re-tell the stories.
  • New vocabulary from the texts is introduced, modelled and displayed.

Playing in the reading den, promotes imaginative play, develops communication and language and embeds a repertoire of stories in the child’s memory, which can then be drawn upon when creating their own stories.

“Parental involvement in their child’s reading has been found to be the most important determinant of language and emergent literacy.” (Bus, van Jzendoorn and Pellegrini, 1995 – taken from www.earlyreadingconnects.org.uk)

Please continue to access Tapestry to ‘Like’ and read the fabulous Imagination Library ideas. We would also love for you to add your own observations to show the fun with reading, you have at home!

NURSERY – Bumblebees

We would like to welcome our new Bumblebees who have joined us the term. Our Bumblebee family has grown and we are looking forward to creating many more memories together.

Our themes this term will be ‘Winter Time’ and ‘Spring Time’. We will be helping the children to think about how the seasons change in the world around us. Through the R.E. topics, the children learn about ways we can celebrate and gather together as part of the Parish family. They begin to recognise the important role Jesus plays in our life through the Lenten journey and the sacrifices he made during Easter time.

We will help the children to explore the changing seasons through walks to the woods where they will be able to make comparisons from our autumn walk. Children will begin to explore ice through real and scientific experiments. We will help them to recognise how where we live is different to other places in the world.

Children will continue to be exposed to a love of words and numbers through songs and rhymes. Singing songs and rhymes at home is such an important way of supporting your child’s development in many areas of the early year’s curriculum. Nursery Rhymes and Songs – BBC Teach

This term, we will begin to introduce the children to the ‘Little Wandle’ phonics programme where we will support children’s auditory development through listening for sounds in words and beginning to orally blend words. Using Numberblocks as a basis, we will continue to embed a love of number play with a focus on numbers to 5.

RECEPTION – Ladybirds and Dragonflies

Our themes this term is ‘Superheroes’ and ‘Traditional Tales’. We will continue to build upon learning children have experienced in nursery and last term in reception, thinking in more detail about people who are special and the gifts they possess. We will further embed a true love of reading, supporting children to become their own story teller!

We will deepen the children’s knowledge of the changing seasons by encouraging them to think about how the world has changed from summer time to autumn time to winter time and finally the changes spring brings. The children will enjoy a winter walk and begin to develop map reading to support our journey around the woods.

The children will begin to learn the processes involved in design and technology – they will have the opportunity to design a mask and then make their own to take home! We will hopefully enjoy and explore weather changes with snow and ice – this may need to be man-made with the warmer seasons we are now experiencing!

English

English is a core subject taught throughout our school, starting in Reception through to Year 6. As a school, we use an English scheme called Read to Write. This term the children will enjoy, explore and respond to two different vehicle texts. ‘Juniper Jupiter’ by Lizzy Stewart and ‘Little Red’ by Dana Marie Bell.

The English scheme allows children to develop a rich vocabulary and to learn how stories are developed. Our story friends – Opening Octopus, Build Up Bear, Penguin Problem and Elephant Ending will continue to help the children be more focused on the different parts of stories and information texts. Wise Owl will further support children in sentence writing.

Phonics and Reading Practice

Phonics is the understanding of letters and the sounds they make. It supports the development of early reading and writing.

In Reception, we teach Phonics using the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’ curriculum. Please click on this link to find out more about how we teach this scheme with your child – Phonics and Reading. 

Further information can be found on the parent page on the Little Wandle website – https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

This term, your child will bring home a password to enable them to access a website used throughout school called Reading Eggs. This allows your child to have access to phonic activities.

Maths

Through our varied maths experiences our children will know:

  • Cardinality and counting helps children to know the quantity or ‘howmanyness’ of things
  • Comparison involves knowing which numbers are worth more or less than each other
  • Composition helps children know that numbers can be made up from two or more smaller numbers
  • Subitising helps children to notice patterns and be able to see amounts without counting
  • Pattern helps children notice and understand ‘maths’ relationships
  • Shape and space helps children to know how we can move and combine shapes and develops thinking skills
  • Measures allows children to explore how we can find out about and compare length, weight and height

The children in Reception follow a scheme called White Rose Maths; this term, the units of work are called ‘Alive in 5!’  and ‘Growing 6,7,8’. Advice and guidance for parents | White Rose Maths We also teach the children mathematical concepts using NCETM Mastery Maths.

Your child can continue to access the online website Mathletics. Mathletics is used throughout the school and forms a part of your child’s homework when they move into Year 1.

WE ARE HERE TO HELP

We continue to look forward to working together with you and your child in the early years. Please remember we are always here to help and support you during this journey together.

Please remember to check Tapestry every week – if you have not yet accessed your account, a link has been sent. (Sometimes the link goes to the Junk box.) If you have not been able to access your account, please let a member of the team know asap. You can add observations to Tapestry and as your child’s first educator, these observations are crucial in helping us to build up a picture of your child’s progress.

Here are some additional useful websites:

Imagination Library – https://www.northlincs.gov.uk/schools-libraries-and-learning/imagination-library/#1611059488420-d8e635d8-6475

North Lincolnshire Library – https://www.northlincs.gov.uk/schools-libraries-and-learning/libraries-in-north-lincolnshire/

Tiny Happy People – https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people

Words Count – https://www.northlincs.gov.uk/schools-libraries-and-learning/words-count-in-north-lincolnshire/

Phonics Play – PhonicsPlay – Parent Information

Topmarks – Early Years – Topmarks Search