Owl Class - Nursery & Reception 2024 - 2025
Mrs Hidalgo
Mr Roberts
Dear EYFS parent/carer,
We are excited to welcome our new Nursery and Reception intake into our EYFS class this term. Our aim at Newtown is to inspire and excite children at the beginning of their learning adventure and provide every member of our EYFS with a sense of awe, wonder and pride in their everyday learning and achievements. We are excited to start this Autumn with you.
In Literacy this term, our reception children will be exploring the text ‘The Something’ by Rebecca Cobb. We will be using this book to ignite our imaginations as we begin to wonder what the ‘something’ is, that lurks in the deep, dark hole…
To continue to transpire our love for reading, we will be sharing lots of story books and poems throughout the day as well as in our shared reading sessions.
At Newtown, we use Ready Steady Phonics to teach children phonics and letter formation. We will be holding an information evening about how these sessions work in school, as well as how you can help at home. More information on this will be sent out to parents.
We will also begin our maths journey this term, with our reception cohort, using Power Maths to develop our numeracy skills. We will particularly focus on numbers to 5, whilst having some time to look at shapes and groups.
In our Understanding the World units, we will explore themes of ourselves, families and friendships, delving into the children’s own lives and history, looking at animal families, how to express our feelings to friends, where we belong and how special we are, and begin exploring maps and areial photos of our own local community.
Our Expressive Arts and Design units will see us explore different media and marks resulting in a self portrait and becoming introduced to singing a range of nursery rhymes, singing with others and playing basic percussion instuments.
Home-learning:
Children in Reception will be sent a decodable reading book home each week, this book will have been taught and practiced in school during the week previous. We suggest reading with your child every day for around 5 minutes. This will help solidify their phonics knowledge, help with their reading fluency and holistically aid children in all aspects of our curriculum.
You can find lots more information to support learning at home in our home learning section.
CVC Word Practice Cards will also be sent home to practice, as well as sound mats to help with any home learning.
Research shows that children
At Newtown we recognise the importance of speaking and listening skills. Speaking and listening underpins all that we do and therefore are the building blocks of learning. Therefore, we also be sending home 'Talk Homework' to guide you and your child to share in the learning that has taken place in school.
It will provide an opportunity to:
* retreve and consolidate the information and vocabulary learnt in school and,
* provide time to develop their speaking and listening skills
PE:
PE lessons will take place on Wednesday morning and Friday afternonn. Children are required to come to school wearing their full PE kit.
Nursery
Our nursery children will be listening to and exploring the text 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt.' by Michael Rosen. 
To continue to develop the love of reading and sharing stories our nursery children will also begin their Book Talk sessions where they will learn 'Goodnight Gorilla' alongside sharing their favourite stories and visits to the library.
Super Sounds activities will see our nursery children to learn the vital skills in preparation for their Ready Steady Phonics lessons in Reception. Activities include alliteration, syllables, intial sounds and oral blending.
The children will explore Maths throughout the environment as they sort, match, make patterns, explore shape, count and recognise numbers.
Through Understanding the World the children will begin to learn about festivals and families, learning about similarites and differences within cultures and communities.
In Expressive Arts and Design they will explore marks using their hands and feet to make autumnal patterns and learn a range of nursery rhymes.
Forest School
Forest School will be held on Friday's. We have our own all-in-ones and wellies for the children to use over their school PE kits. However, during the colder weather we will ask that you send an extra layer of clothing, hats and gloves into school for the children to put over their PE kits to put on to keep them warm. Please also put a spare set of clothes in their bag incase they get wet or cold.
Key Information
- Please label all clothing to avoid the loss of property.
- Children should wear full uniform and black school shoes each day (unless it is a PE or forest school day).
- Our PE sessions will be on a Wednesday and Friday. Children are required to wear their full school PE kit to school with sensible trainers on these days. (PE kits can be purchsed from the school shop)
- Children should bring a water bottle everyday. Children are asked to bring water only.
- Children do not need to bring pencil cases or other personal items to school.
To find out more about who will be teaching the class click on our Meet the Team page.
Any questions we are always available at the end of the school day.
We are really looking forward to starting another amazing school year with you all and don’t forget to follow what goes on in our school on our Class Dojo page!
Mrs Hidalgo and Mr Roberts
