Reception
Autumn 2 – 2024
Launch
The children will explore the nature trail and look for signs of autumn. When they are up on the nature trail they will stumble across Percy the park keeper who will be trying to look after the animals. He will share his story with the children and then set them a task of finding out how to look after them and report back to him.
Landing
After completing some work on one of our other text this half term, Stickman by Julia Donaldson, the children will create their own thank yous’ to Santa for helping Stickman return to his family tree.
Key events
- Monday 4th November – Topic launch
- Friday 8th November – Birthday party and Foxy fireworks
- Friday 15th November – Children in Need
- Thursday 21st November – Family photos 3:15pm
- Wednesday 27th November – New Forest National Park Association and no pen day
- Tuesday 10th December – Christmas show
- Wednesday 11th December – Christmas show
- Friday 13th December – MAST Trip, Christmas jumper day and Winter fair
- Monday 16th December – Christmas show
- Tuesday 17th December – Church visit, Christmas dinner and Rocksteady concert
- Wednesday 18th December – Books at bedtime PJ day
- Thursday 19th December – Christmas party day (Dress down)
Communication and Language
In Autumn 2, the children will be exposed to a range of stories to include stickman, Percy the Park keeper and The Jolly Postman. We will focus heavily on language from these stories, encouraging children to use this within their play. We will also ask children to join in with rhymes before continuing and making their own rhyming string. Throughout their MOLE time, the children will be encouraged to take turns with a friend to have a conversation.
Writing
To begin our writing journey, the children will be building their fine motor control by practising the different letter family. Following this, the children will revisit writing their names using their cursive handwriting. To finish our learning journey, the children will begin to identify what they hear at the beginning of words and write the corresponding set one sound.
Physical development
Throughout physical development, we will focus on the children’s fine motor control. Within writing, the children will explore mark making, encouraging the tri-pod grip and a good posture for writing. We will continue to use write dance to build their core muscle strength. As we explore PE the children will learn how to sensibly work with others by taking turns and sharing. The children will do this through static and dynamic balances and looking at how to jump and land safely.
PSED
The children will explore the concept of valuing differences. We will think about how we can be sensitive to each other through kindness. They will then look at similarities and differences between families including celebrating what makes each of us unique.
Maths
Following our first learning journey, in maths we will use our understanding of numbers 0-5 to explore partitioning (splitting a whole amount), addition (finding the total of 2 or more amounts), subtraction (taking one quantity and removing a part from it) and number bonds (addition and subtraction facts). We will then move onto learning about common 2D shapes, we will identify the features of a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon and hexagon. These features include sides and corners.
Understanding the world
We will continue going on our nature trail as much as possible this half term to explore the natural world around us. In geography we will look at an environment that is different to our own and compare the similarities and differences. In science we will be learning about animals that we would find on our nature trail and animals that we would see in the New Forest, we will learn the features of these animals and compare them. We will continue to discuss the topic ‘people who help us’ and different significant people in society within our history learning. In RE we will discuss the concept ‘celebration’, looking at birthdays in relation to why Christians celebrate Christmas.
Expressive art and design
The children will continue to explore their environment, including the art resources and role-play. Within design and technology, we will design and discuss how to make a sandwich, followed by making sandwiches using the sandwich filling we liked the best when testing them in DT last half term. We will have a tea party where we can eat our sandwiches and pretend we are at a birthday party. In music, we will explore instruments in relation to the weather, looking specifically at dynamics (loud and quiet) and tempo (fast and slow). We will also be learning lots of new songs while practising for our school nativity and learning a Christmas poem which includes rhyming.