Year R

Welcome to Year R! 

Ready, steady, grow! In our current learning adventure we will be learning about the growth and change of plants and animals. To launch this adventure we will visit Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and complete a range of activities in this wonderful outdoor space. We will plant seeds, hunt for minibeasts and find out about farms. The curriculum overview for this adventure can be found here. 

Year R is an exciting year where we welcome children on their school journey.  This year sees children complete their early years foundation stage with experiences within the seven areas of learning that they began within their pre-school settings.  We value the importance of play both indoors and outdoors as a rich context for children’s learning in which they explore the world around them, practise skills and consolidate what they have learnt.  Strong and meaningful relationships are formed between staff and children allowing us to plan for each child’s individual journey.  We are a three-form entry school and have ninety children split into three classes.  These are: 

• Rabbits with Mrs Vidler, Mrs Atwell and Mrs Skinner

• Otters with Mrs Davison and Mrs Worley

• Badgers with Miss Power and Miss Mitchell

• Miss Howard and Mrs Goves support across Year R

In addition to their class based experiences each week, children have PE on a Tuesday and Wednesday where they will spend time in the hall or outside developing their physical skills.  Children go on a weekly welly walk in the school grounds and have their boots in school ready to explore on any day throughout the week.  

As our learning is personalised and generated by interests that the children share; activities and focus areas change on a regular basis. We have attached our Learning Adventure Map below to give some detail about our EYFS Curriculum and share with you some of the key texts we cover, amongst many others! 

 

Year R Recommended Reads

 

Please use the link below to access a range of recommended books to share with your Year R child.  These have been carefully selected to represent a wide range of age appropriate themes.

https://www.booksfortopics.com/reception

Here is a poster view of the same books available to download.

50 Recommended Reads Reception

 

Year R Termly Updates 2023 to 2024

Autumn Term 2023

Year R have settled wonderfully into school life at Netley Abbey and we are all feeling a sense of belonging to our new classes after completing our first learning adventure ‘Belonging at Netley Abbey’. We are so proud of each of the children in how well they are learning about their new school. The curriculum overview for this adventure can be found here. 

In our classrooms we have explored different learning areas and the activities we can choose to do in each one. We have enjoyed going on a tour of the school and meeting other members of our school community. In our key person groups we have spent time learning each others names and finding our more about each other. We have shared stories about starting school and a book called ‘Super Duper You.’ The children have been able to tell us about their super abilities and what they can do.

We celebrated what we have found out so far about our school with our families at our first come and play session. We wonder where you feel a sense of belonging?

       

 

 

We started our learning adventure with our very first welly walk around school. We explored what lived in the woods and found some different mini-beasts and birds. In literacy we read the book “Who’s hiding in the woods” and found out some information about woodland animals. Then we made our own class version of the book by drawing and labelling an animal hiding in the woods. We enjoyed exploring autumn and found out about the changes that happen. It was great fun playing in our own pumpkin patch role play area. Our learning adventure ended with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and making and eating our own porridge which was very tasty and great fun!

The curriculum overview for this adventure can be found here. 

      

 

 

We look forward to updating you about our future experiences here. 

 Year R Termly Updates 2022 to 2023

Autumn Term 2022

Belonging at Netley Abbey Infant School was our first learning adventure of the Autumn Term.  Teachers visited children at home before welcoming them into their new classrooms, ensuring everyone knew that they belong to our school.  We read the book 'Super Duper You' and thought about how we are super in different ways. 

In the classrooms, we spent time in the different learning areas and making new friends.  We went on a tour of the school building and met members of staff who also belong at our school. 

After reading ‘Once there were giants’ we shared photographs of when we were babies and spoke about how we have changed as we have grown.  We invited our grown-ups into school to show them what we have learnt about our new school.

We are so proud of all the children who have settled into school wonderfully and know they belong at Netley Abbey Infant School.

 

            

 

Here is a link to the Curriculum Overview for the beginning of the Autumn Term 2022 for our learning adventure  'Belonging at Netley Abbey Infant School.'

 

 

Our second learning adventure of the year invited us to go on 'Woodland Adventures.'  We went on our first Welly Walk around the school grounds and thought about the animals that might be hiding in the woods.  We learnt facts about woodland creatures through reading 'Who is hiding in the woods?' and spotting changes to the trees outside whilst reading the book 'Tree' together. Each class has chosen a tree to observe over the year and we watched the leaves change colour during autumn.  We found porridge making items hiding in the library and learnt about the bears from the story of 'Goldilocks and the three bears' who also live in the woods and made our own porridge to taste!  To celebrate our learning we invited our families to join us on a local walk to Westwood. 

 

         

 

 Here is the curriculum overview for our 'Woodland Adventures' learning adventure. 

 

We have all enjoyed our ‘Let’s Celebrate’ learning adventure. Our adventure started with an invitation to Lee’s birthday party. We wore our party clothes and had a birthday party. We talked about how we celebrate our own birthdays and if everyone celebrates in the same way.

One day a surprise delivery arrived. It was a nativity set and the story ‘The Christmas Promise’. We listened to different versions of the Christmas story and told the story in our Christmas plays – we were all superstars when we performed for our families. We have also learnt about why Christmas is important for Christians and how they celebrate at this time of year.

Our come and play sessions were a great success with lots of fabulous decorations being made with our families. These are making our classrooms look very festive!

In the book ‘Joy to the World’ we found out how Christmas is celebrated in lots of different countries. Our learning adventure finished with Christmas party that we planned together. It was great fun!

We hope everyone enjoys celebrating over the holidays.

                   

Here is the curriculum overview for our 'Let's Celebrate' learning adventure.

 

Spring Term 2023

Our nursery rhyme learning adventure began with learning some new rhymes about the season of winter including ‘Jack Frost’ and ‘The north wind doth blow.’  We went on a wintery walk, explored ice and even had a snowy day experience! Little Robin wanted to know more about winter so we wrote down what we had found out and even learnt about other cold places in the world.

We had a Makaton nursery rhyme session in the hall and used signs to learn some new rhymes.  When learning the rhyme ‘Jack and Jill’ we learnt about life in the past and talked about why Jack and Jill needed to get a pail of water from the well.  After singing ‘Miss Polly had a dolly who was sick’ we changed the rhymes to include ourselves and a different patient to be poorly.  We loved singing our own versions of the rhymes and wrote these down for others to read.

In our mathematical learning we sang number rhymes such as ‘five little speckled frogs’ and ‘five little ducks’ to explore ways to make the total five.  We listened to 'Cobbler, cobbler mend my shoe' then we drew around our shoes and found objects that were longer and shorter than them. We are learning to use the words longer and shorter to compare length. We also sang 'When Goldilocks went to the house of the bears' and compared the height of the characters in the song and compared our height with a friend.

We completed our adventure with a nursery rhyme dress up day to celebrate all the learning we had done and share the rhymes we had learnt.

Here is the curriculum overview for the nursery rhyme adventure. 

 

     

 

We have had a great half term! It started with the arrival of some straw, sticks and a brick, all prompts to help us learn about the ‘Three Little Pigs’. Then Chris the story teller came and told us some traditional tales starting with the 'Three Little Pigs'. We enjoyed exploring which objects would and would not move when we huffed and puffed them.

We then heard some bad news! The Gingerbread Man had run away from the little old lady and the little man. We hunted high and low and found lots of clues but no Gingerbread Man. We made some lost posters so that everyone would help look for him. We also made gingerbread men – fortunately they didn’t run away and tasted delicious! In another version of The Gingerbread Man that we read, he jumped off the foxes nose and ran off into the sunset! The fox then helped the other characters to keep fit so they could try and catch him. We wrote about what we do to keep fit.

In our maths we have been ordering towers with different numbers of cubes and noticed it makes a pattern like stairs with one more each time. We have used our subitising skills to talk about how different numbers can be made. We are also beginning to explore doubling.

Here is the curriculum overview for the 'Run, run as fast as you can' adventure. 

         

      

 

This half term our learning adventure has been ‘Ready Steady Grow’. We started by each planting a sunflower to take home and grow for a sunflower competition. In school we have planted some other seeds and watched how they have grown. We made sure they had sunlight and have been remembering to water them. We read Eddie’s Garden and wrote instructions for Eddie to tell him how to plant a seed. Then we moved to learning about things that grow on the farm. We learnt about some farm animals and wrote riddles. We read the story of ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and visited the crime scene to see for ourselves what Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len had been up to. Luckily they hadn’t managed to steal the prize cow! We wonder what you have noticed growing in the world around you? 

    

           

Here is our curriculum overview for our 'Ready, Steady, Grow!' learning adventure. 

 

Our final learning adventure of the year was 'Make a splash!' During this adventure we learnt about life under the sea and went on a trip to an aquarium.  Here is our curriculum overview for this learning adventure.  

We started our adventure with an exciting trip to the Blue Reef Aquarium. We used our new first hand knowledge as well as internet searches to write fact files about Sea Life Creatures. We concluded our learning with a fabulous ‘Beach’ day in our Year R garden. Everybody had lots of fun and the sun even came out for us! 

 

                          

 

Year R Termly Updates 2021 to 2022

Autumn Term 2021

Starting school was our first adventure of the autumn term! We learnt about the routines of the day and went on a tour of the school.  Joining in with new friends and learning their names throughout the day was a focus for us.  We enjoyed our first welly walk onto the field and hunted for signs of autumn.  After finding small, middle-sized and large spoons and bowls on our walk through the woods we told the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.  We made our own porridge like the bears and enjoyed having a taste! We have settled so well into school life at Netley Abbey Infants.

We used our imaginations during our next learning adventure after reading the book ‘Not a box.’  We thought of what our own boxes could be transformed into and spent time pretending and creating in class. We created a gallery of our box creations which we shared with parents at home via Tapestry.

Singing and learning new nursery rhymes led our next learning adventure ending in a fantastic Christmas nursery rhyme performance to parents at the end of term.  We had a nursery rhyme dress up day to celebrate our learning with a singing session with Jiggy Wrigglers in school.  We were musicians in adding instruments to the ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ rhyme and performed our rhymes to each other on the stage outside.  We also changed the rhyme so that Incy Wincy had to climb up other things such as sunflowers, rainbows or the paw patrol tower!

 

Spring Term 2022

After celebrating Christmas at home over the holidays we came back to school to our new learning adventure ‘Celebrating Me.’   We drew pictures of ourselves and wrote a page for our class ‘All about me’ book. We learnt about our feelings linking these to the ‘Zones of Regulation’ that were introduced in our classrooms and thought carefully about how we feel in the green, blue, yellow and red zones.  We compared numbers to ten and thought about how these numbers could be made up.  After reading ‘Once there were giants’ we talked about how we have changed over time and shared photographs from home.  We celebrated where we live through a walk in the local area around the school talking about what we noticed along the way.  At Chinese New Year we learnt about how others celebrate special events and enjoyed learning about different traditions.

In the lead up to ‘World Book Day’ celebrations our learning adventure changed to ‘Tell me a story’ and we loved immersing ourselves in storytelling.  We brought in favourite books from home writing our recommendations in book reviews for our reading areas.  Helicopter Stories were introduced allowing us to perform the stories we told on a classroom stage.  We compared size through organising a box of books delivered from the library and talked about what we noticed using words such as taller and shorter.  As part of our R.E. we listened to stories that Jesus told and thought about how we can learn through stories.  We visited Netley Library to share our book reviews and see what a real library is like.

“Where has the Gingerbread Man gone?” This was the launch to our adventure ‘Run Run as Fast as You Can!’ We found lots of clues but we could not find the Gingerbread Man so we wrote lost posters and drew maps to try and find him. We read Keep running Gingerbread Man and found out how to stay fit and healthy like the Gingerbread Man. Finally we enjoyed making our own Gingerbread Men and eating them, luckily ours didn’t run away!