Welcome to summer term in Manaus Class. It is going to be a busy time! The children will continue to develop their social skills and will build on relationships made. They will continue to develop their independence skills and confidence, in preparation for many of them transitioning to their Reception classes in September.

As always, the children follow a play-based curriculum. This takes place through a range of stimulating and engaging activities which allow children to explore, communicate, question and develop their understanding. The children will have opportunities to learn skills through focused activities and independent play and their learning journey will follow their individual needs within the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021).

This term they will be learning skills through our topics on:

• Growing and Changing – we will be finding out how plants and animals grow and change. We will be participating in some food growing projects and it will include our Sunflower Challenge. We will also be learning about animal lifecycles, particularly caterpillars. It will also include supporting children with the transition to a new class or school (for those who are moving to Reception in September), as they, themselves, grow and change.

• Traditional (and other) Tales – finding out about other times and places through stories.

In addition, we will be continuing our Forest School sessions; continuing to explore vegetables and fruits using all five senses, in our TasteEd sessions and celebrating Gordon School’s 120^th Anniversary.

Communication, Language and Literacy

• Listen to longer stories and recall much of what happens
• Understand ‘why’ questions
• Speak with clarity, attempting multisyllabic words and using future and past tenses (mostly correctly)
• Start conversations with adults and peers and continue for many turns

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

• Play with one or more other children, extending and elaborating play e.g. role play activity
• Have a sense of responsibility and community
• Develop appropriate ways of being assertive
• Find solutions to conflicts and rivalries

Physical Development

• Continue to develop their balance, coordination and movement skills e.g. hopping, skipping and improve ball skills
• Continue to improve large muscle movements to support pre-writing skills
• Increasingly use and remember sequences and patterns of movements related to music and rhythm
• Use a range of one-handed tools
• Refine fine motor skills in preparation for writing

Literacy

• Use print and letter knowledge in early writing attempts
• Write first name independently in a variety of media
• Continue Phase 1 phonics letters and sounds activities; e.g. recognise words with the same initial sound, begin to orally blend/segment, start to recognise rhyme
• Engage in extended conversations about stories and quality texts such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Caterpillar Butterfly, Jasper’s Beanstalk, Jack and the Beanstalk, Camille and the Sunflowers, Ten Seeds, A Seed is a Suitcase, Mabel’s Magical Garden, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Sleeping Beauty, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Granny Went to Market    

Mathematics

• Understand that numbers 1-5 are made up of other numbers
• Understand the number of a group can be changed by adding to it or taking from it (addition and subtraction of 1)
• Addition and subtraction of numbers to 5
• Compare quantities to 5
• Talk about and explore basic 2D and 3D shapes using informal and mathematical language e.g. ‘sides’, ‘corners’, ‘straight’, ‘flat’, ‘round’, curved
• Understand position through words alone
• Discuss routes and locations using words like ‘in front of’ and ‘behind’
• Make comparisons between objects relating to size, length, weight, capacity

Understanding the World

• Show interest in different occupations
• Explore how things work
• Plant seeds and care for growing plants
• Understand the key features of the life cycle of a plant and an animal
• Begin to understand the need to respect and care for the natural environment and all living things
• Know there are different countries in the world and talk about differences they have experienced or seen in photos/books

Expressive Arts and Design

• Make imaginative and complex ‘small worlds’ with blocks and construction kits
• Develop complex stories using small world equipment
• Develop own ideas and then decide which materials to use to express them
• Explore colour and colour mixing
• Sing the pitch of a tone sung by another person (pitch match)
• Sing the melodic shape of familiar songs

Please note that some aspects/ topics may change in order to adapt to the children’s interests and learning needs.

• Forest School sessions will continue on Wednesdays. If your child has not been before, please refer to the Forest School section on our website for information on the ethos of forest school: 

https://www.gordonprimary.co.uk/curriculum/forest-school 

• ‘Lending Library’ is on a Friday. Please ensure your child brings in their book bag and Reading Record on that day, or every day if they wish to. Please read with your child on a daily basis (this could include the book they borrow from nursery, a book from home or why not enrol at Eltham library? Talk to them about the book and check their understanding by asking questions about events and the characters’ actions. Please also explain new or unfamiliar vocabulary. It would be great if you could comment on how your child responded to the book borrowed from the nursery and encourage them to have a go at drawing in their reading record.
• We collect a voluntary donation of £1 at the end of sessions on Fridays to pay for snacks, fruit/vegetables for TasteEd activities and other miscellaneous resources. Alternatively, you can pay £6.00 at the beginning of each half-term, if that is more convenient. Thank you to everyone who has contributed over the past term – without this we would not be able to provide snacks, cooking ingredients, ingredients for playdough, sensory resources etc. Please contribute, if you can afford it.
• If your child is not going to be in Nursery please inform the school office/teacher by phone/email.
• If your child is to be collected by someone who is not familiar to the Nursery staff, please inform us in advance.
• We are a Healthy School. Please do not send in sweets or other treats when it is your child’s birthday. If you want to celebrate your child’s birthday with their classmates, you could buy the class a book, send in a healthy snack such as boxes of raisins or buy stationery such as pencils, but due to the impact on the environment, we ask you not to send in plastic toys.

• Thank you for signing up to the Interactive Learning Diary. Don’t forget to share your child’s achievements in nursery and it would be great if you could upload information from home that we can then share in school. Our weekly home learning ideas/activities are sent out on the Learning Zone on ILD.  This is available on the online version of ILD – not the app. It is a great way to find out what your child has been doing in nursery that week so that you can talk to them about what they have been doing and how you can help to consolidate this learning at home. Please ask if you are experiencing difficulties with signing in.
• If you have any questions or wish to raise a concern, please contact the class teacher in the first instance: lmiller@gordon.greenwich.sch.uk 

Please note the following events and add them to your diary:

• Friday 26th April - Cake Sale and Pre-Loved Uniform Sale
• Monday 29th April - Class photographs
• Thursday 2nd May - Local elections (Sports Hall) – school open as usual
• Monday 6th May - Bank Holiday – school closed
• 20th to 24th May - Walk to School Week
• 27th to 31st May - Half-term break
• Monday 3rd June - Inset Day – school closed
• Tuesday 4th June - Children return to school
• 17th to 21st June - Dance workshops for all year groups
• 9th to 11th July - Gordon Exhibition 
• Friday 12th July - EYFS Sports Day (morning)
• Friday 19th July - 120th Anniversary Party 
• Tuesday 23rd July - last day of term for Nursery