Welcome to Puffins and Penguins!

Our Year R year group is made up of 2 classes called Puffins Class and Penguins Class. We work across our early years unit with both classes mixing most of the day. Our outdoor area is open in all weathers, with the children having free-flow play inside and outside. We are passionate about play in our school! Long periods of uninterrupted, child-initiated play facilitated and supported by experienced Early Years teachers and Teaching Assistants is what makes our Year R children successful, happy , life-long curious learners 🙂

In the first half term of school we focus on learning about ourselves and others; building warm relationships with adults and friends. We learn our school rules and routines so we feel safe and secure, and we also begin building our characteristics of effective learning to help us facilitate our own learning in our enabling environment.

Our PE day is Wednesday – we come to school dressed in our PE kits. We love PE! This session is once a week. We also have access to large and small resources inside and out to help us develop our whole bodies. A big focus is on developing our gross motor skills so we can then refine those and develop strong, fine motor skills too. We use a variety of real tools and resources to support this. For example we use real spades, shovels, pots, pans, cutlery and crockery. We have large climbing apparatus and building equipment such as pallets, tyres, rope, netting, planks and guttering. We also have a hammock and rope swing for sensory development and pure fun! We have an outside sandpit which is often wet and great for building , digging and much, much more. We also have an inside sandpit that is only dry sand. This is a different sensory experience where the children explore pouring, shaking and spooning the sand into different containers. Not only is this sensory fun, we also learn lots about capacity , mass and weight.

We are also big on reading in a year R. We enjoy many, many stories everyday. We have a big focus on developing strong communication and language skills. We focus on developing key skills such as speaking and listening, becoming a talking partner, learning poetry, songs and nursery rhymes. We learn to ask and annswer questions through purposeful enhancements such as having chicks to look after at spring time. The books we read everyday could be ones the children have chosen from our carefully selected book areas, or books the adults have intentionally placed in areas to ensure we ‘bump into books’ everyday and learn the importance of using fiction and non fiction texts to inform our lives. We use books to retrieve information and facts too. For example, we use books to help us learn about Puffins and Penguins, to help us design a sock puppet, or to support our creative block area where we learn about different architecture and buildings. We visit our school library where we take out a book each fortnight to enjoy at home. We also visit Hayling Library every half term to sing songs and each child chooses a book to take out. These books are kept in school and Mrs Young and Miss White read one each day. We also have a ‘book of the week’ which will be carefully chosen to develop a skill, prompt discussion, enhance learning, or be a text driver in a topic.

Our class blog is a mini snapshot into how much fun we have in Year R!
Please take a look through our blog to see what we’ve been doing through the year 🙂

Here are some resources that will support learning in YR:

• 1-5 number track
• Blank 5 frame
• Word and picture matching
• Level 2 action sound mat
• Handwriting formation sheet

Phonics

Our school phonics scheme is: Twinkl Phonics

Please find below important resources to support your child develop a strong foundation of Level 1 phonics. Level 1 phonics is taught in preschool, and contains the skills necessary to begin to read and write.

Here is a Level 2 sound mat – we start teaching Level 2 phonics in the children’s 2nd week of full time days.

We will update this web page with more resources and news as the year progresses. However the best thing you can do at home to support your child’s whole, unique self, is read, play, laugh, chat and be together. There’s nothing between than talk and fun, books and love 💕

In the mean time, enjoy our blog!

From the Year R Team :-).

Here are our Phonics minibooks from Autumn 1.