Early Years

It is very important for our youngest AbbeyHillians to develop skills which enable them to form good friendship groups.

In Preschool we promote positive actions to create a friendly and welcoming environment for all.

Sharing food at snack time is a great way to discover your own likes and dislikes. You can learn new words and also practice identifying different colours. Click the picture below to hear Peppa Pig’s Fruit and Vegetable song.

It is important for every child to stay active for at least 30 minutes every day.

This is very important for a healthy body and healthy mind.

Kicking,  throwing and catching is a great way to use all the muscles in  your body. This will help hand eye coordination, balance and spacial awareness. All these skills are used for writing.

Jumping is a great way to exert some excess energy and can be done in all areas inside and outside.

Count step/stairs and jump of the last as a reward for good counting. Click the picture below to hear one our favourite songs ‘Sleeping bunnies’ which we sing during our session, this songs allows your child to jump. 

Let’s get moving!!

Below are few different ideas in which you can get active. Which was your favourite to try?

• Bubble fun – Blow lots of bubbles and see how many you can catch.

• Hide and seek – You could either play hide and seek with your grown up taking it in turns to hide or you or your grown up could hide your toys and take it in turns to find them, 
• Bowling – Using empty plastic bottles and ball, see how many you can knock over. You could either roll the ball or kick the ball into the bottles. How many can you knock over?

• Animal walk – Can you walk like an animal? Slither like a snake, hop like a frog, gallop like a horse. How many more can you think of?
• Puddle jumping – Get on your wellies find a puddle and jump!

• Dance party – Put on some music and have a boogie!
• Click the picture below to hear Justin and Robert the Robots version of the Hokey Cokey. Don’t forget to join in! 😉

• Click the picture below to hear the song ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’. Can you complete all actions with Mr Tumble?

• Stop and go – Walk/Run around and when your grown-up says STOP you freeze and wait until your grown-up says GO,

• Kick/throw a ball,
• keep the balloon up – if you have any balloons all you need to do is blow it up and then keep it off the ground. How long can you keep it in the air for?

Fine motor 

• Stick tape to the table or floor and peel it off. You could even stick some of yours toys to the table and them peel them off.

• Using just pine cones and elastic bands. Wrap the elastic bands around the pine cones,
• Spaghetti and colander – Just thread the spaghetti through the colander. If u don’t have spaghetti you could use plastic straws.

Storytime

Read or listen to your favourite stories with the help of your grown-up or brother or sister. What’s your favourite story to read?

Below are a few stories that you might want to listen to, just click onto the picture to watch and listen.

You could even make up your own story with the help of your grow-up. What is your story about?

Activity with Dear Zoo

Storytime

Click the Dear Zoo picture below to hear the story being read.

Vocab time

Click the picture below to watch and listen to a range of basic vocabulary. 

Identify animals

Can you name all the animals from the story? What sounds do the animals from the story make? Which animal is your favourite?

Early Maths!!

Below are a variety of activities that involve maths. Have fun having a go at them!

• Click the pictures below to hear some number songs such as: 5 little monkeys, 10 little dinosaurs and 10 little buses

• Shape song – Click the picture below to learn the different shapes through song.

• Count the cars – Either look out of your window or when out on a walk count the cars that you can see. Can you get to 10? What colours are they? 
• identify numbers – Below are numbers from 1-10, have fun recognising the different numbers.

• Have a go at sorting your Lego/Duplo bricks in order of colour. How many colours do you have?,
• Build a tower- Count the bricks as you go. Make it a game, can you build a bigger tower than your grown-up?

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime stories are a great way to end a busy day, you can either read a story that you have at home or you could listen to a story on CBeebies Bedtime Stories. Click on the CBeebies Bedtime Stories picture below to listen to a different story every night.

Why not try and make:

• Muffin Pizzas
• Rocky Road

Why do we bake ?

Cooking encourages children’s thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. It also allows children the opportunity to use the knowledge they have and apply it by counting, measuring, following a sequence and following directions.

Creative time!

On this part of the webpage we will upload different creative activities that you can complete at home.

• Vegetable stamping – Simply press apples, potatoes or carrots or any other vegetables that you can think into so paint and then put on the paper.

• Woolly collage – using cotton wool you can have fun making your own woolly sheep!

• Printing with egg cartons – With the help of a grown up cut your egg boxes(look at pictures below) then just using paper and paint get printing. What colours are you going to use?

• Toy car drawing – Tape a felt-tip to the back of a toys car and then roll on paper. Have fun mark making! 🙂

• Drawing fun – All you need is: crayons, paint, paper, cardboard or anything that you have at home and just get drawing. What are you going to draw?
• Stone painting – When out on a walk find some stones and paint them. You could paint: an animal, the sun, a car. Can you think of anything else?

Playdough

Below is the recipe of how to make playdough.

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1 to 1.5 cups of warm water
• food colouring (optional)Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a large mixing bowl

Method:

• Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar in a large mixing bowl,
• Add the warm water bit by bit until the mixture is sticky,
• Allow to cool and then mix the dough with hands until not sticky if needed add a bit more flour 

Music Time!!!

Click the different animal pictures below to hear some nursery rhymes!!

Click the picture of the alphabet below and listen to the ABC song.

Let’s have some fun at home. It’s fun simple activity all you need is a few pans and a spoon, or maybe something else that you have at home. What other things could  you use? Click the picture below to hear a song to sing and listen to while having fun playing music.

Personal, Social & Emotional Development

Learning how to share and take turns is important in the development of our Nursery children. Staff support children to share the toys and to learn to listen to the ideas of their friends.

The children learn to follow our class rules and to understand why they are important.

Our Golden Rules are:

Kind hands

Kind words

Kind friends

How can you help at home?

Finding time to play with your child really helps e.g. playing  a game and supporting them to wait for their turn, or pretending to be a superhero and enjoying make-believe play together.

Teaching our children manners is really important and it’s great when you encourage them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at home.

Communication and Language

Over the next few weeks as we introduce the new themes and stories, it will really help your child, if you encourage them to talk about the topics and re-tell the stories using their own words.

Developing children’s vocabulary and helping them have the confidence to put their thoughts into words, is so important for Nursery children.

Sharing songs together is great, because the children have fun and songs are fantastic for developing language!

The BBC have created a site which has great songs, which your children can sing along to! Click on the link below

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/nursery-rhymes-songs-index/zhwdgwx

Physical Development

In Nursery, we work on developing our “gross motor” and “fine motor” skills.

Gross motor skills

These relate to the larger muscles in your body, and involve large muscle movements. Using your legs to jump or your arms to throw a ball are good examples.

At school, we try to develop our gross motor skills everyday! Some examples of our activities to help with this are:

Climbing on the climbing frame and balancing equipment, riding bikes, throwing and catching a large ball, obstacle courses (running through cones, jumping in hoops, hopscotch etc.)

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills relate to the smaller muscle groups, such as the ones in your hands and wrists. These help you to use tools and equipment like scissors and pencils and are very important in helping you to write.

At school, we try to develop our fine motor skills everyday too! Some examples of our activities to help with this are:

Using tweezers to pick up small objects, pegging socks onto a line, threading beads onto a string, doing inset jigsaw puzzles, stretching elastic bands onto boards, peeling stickers, using scissors to cut.

How can you help at home?

There are lots of things you can do at home to help with your child’s physical development!

You can play chasing games in the garden or park or have different types of races (running, jumping etc.) You can throw and kick a ball to each other or make your own obstacle courses. 

Inside the house, you could ask your child to see how many pegs they can peg on to a clothes hanger, or they could help you prepare a fruit salad by cutting soft fruit like bananas. Perhaps they’d even like to make a ‘cereal necklace’ – threading cheerios onto string!

Keeping Healthy!

Washing our hands

For all of us, washing our hands regularly has become so important. At School we teach the children to wash their hands for 20 seconds by helping them count to 20, or by singing a favourite Nursery Rhyme e.g. ‘Twinkle. Twinkle, Little Star’.

Eating Healthily

In Nursery, we also start to talk about the different foods we have at snack time and the reasons why. They learn about eating fruit and vegetables, and that they help us to grow big and strong.

Literacy

Reading

In Nursery, our key goal is to help children develop a love of stories. We read books which link to our topic, but we also read lots of other stories and poems.

At the beginning of the year, the focus is on listening to and enjoying the stories, and in joining in with repeated phrases or familiar parts of the story. Stories such as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ are great to get the children joining in!

As the year progresses, we begin to be more aware of the way stories are structured. We talk about the characters in the story and how the story might end! 

How can you help at home?

The greatest way to help your child is to share a book together as often as you can! Just before bed is a lovely time! Take the time to enjoy the story together, looking at all the pictures and making the sounds and noises that appear in the book.

You could also listen to stories online. Cbeebies offer a lovely range of bedtime stories!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00jdlm2/cbeebies-bedtime-stories

Writing

In Nursery, it is really important to develop our finger strength, ready for writing, as we become older. We enjoy activities such as ‘Dough disco’ and ‘Lycra time’.

https://youtu.be/o9D5lfqZF3o

We also have daily ‘busy finger’ activities such as peeling carrots and picking up objects with tweezers.

Mark Making

Our main focus in Nursery is mark making and giving meaning to the marks we make.

We do this through all sorts of different media! Pens, crayons, chalks, paints, toys, sticks, even our fingers themselves!

Initially, children like to explore mark marking and might not necessarily give meaning to their marks. That is absolutely fine and all part of their learning journey! 

As they become increasingly confident, you may notice that their marks begin to mean something to them. They might tell you that it’s a picture of you, or perhaps your house!

Encouragement and praise goes a long way in building children’s confidence and can really help them to develop and experiment with their mark making. 

It is really important that we help our children to hold their pencil correctly in the tripod grip, which we call ‘birdy fingers’ at School. Many children find it difficult to hold a pencil like this and so it is important grown-ups that we work together and help our children.

Supporting our children to write their name

We always teach the children to write a capital letter at the beginning of their name and then write small letters after:

It is also important that our children have fun with writing patterns, as this helps with their letter formation.

Mathematics

Number recognition is really important. At the end of Nursery we aim for our children to name the numbers 0-5 when the numbers are shown one at a time.

We also aim for our children to count 5 objects independently and show the correct number of fingers up to 5 when asked.

Counting objects is really important, so please, as I know you are already doing, count together in many different ways e.g. when you climb up steps and the number of plates you put out for dinner.

At School we use the Number Blocks to help the children understand about numbers to 5 and later numbers to 10.

You can find the Number Blocks on CBeebies I Player to share with your children

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08cr24d/numberblocks-series-1-how-to-count

At School we also teach the children about 2D shapes: circle, square, rectangle and triangle

Teaching the children positional language is also very important: in, on, under, behind, next to and in front

Personal, Social & Emotional Development

Learning how to share and take turns is important in the development of our Reception children. Staff support children to share the toys and to learn to listen to the ideas of their friends.

The children learn to follow our class rules and to understand why they are important.

Our Golden Rules are:

Kind hands

Kind words

Kind friends

How can you help at home?

Finding time to play with your child really helps e.g. playing  a game and supporting them to wait for their turn, or pretending to be a superhero and enjoying make-believe play together.

Teaching our children manners is really important and it’s great when you encourage them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at home.

Communication and Language

Over the next few weeks as we introduce the new themes and stories, it will really help your child, if you encourage them to talk about the topics and re-tell the stories using their own words.

Developing children’s vocabulary and helping them have the confidence to put their thoughts into words, is so important for Reception children.

Sharing songs together is great, because the children have fun and songs are fantastic for developing language!

The BBC have created a site which has great songs, which your children can sing along to! Click on the link below

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/nursery-rhymes-songs-index/zhwdgwx

Physical Development

Physical exercise is so important for our children. Just like you, we want our children to be fit and healthy.

Every day we plan for activities in our outdoor classroom to develop their gross and fine motor skills.

These are some activities your children can do at home for extra fun!

Paint with water. Your child will love painting a fence, using a bucket filled with water and a large painting brush.

Blow some bubbles and watch them run! Children love chasing after bubbles and popping them and it also tires them out!

Make an assault course. Pretend to be a Pirate stepping over shark infested water and walking the plank. Children are so good at using their imaginations!

Washing our hands

For all of us, washing our hands regularly has become so important. At School we teach the children to wash their hands for 20 seconds by helping them count to 20, or by singing a favourite Nursery Rhyme e.g. ‘Twinkle. Twinkle, Little Star.

The song below, also teaches the children the importance of washing their hands and how to do it. Click on the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDHJW4r3elE

In Reception, we also start teaching our children about food. They learn about eating fruit and vegetables, which help us grow big and strong. We also learn about the food which we can eat, but should eat a smaller amount of e.g. chocolate, sweets, crisps and biscuits.

The songs below are great for sharing with the children.

https://youtu.be/d3pYWf3ob0U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE5tvaveVak&vl=en

Literacy

Writing

It is really important that we help our children to hold their pencil correctly in the tripod grip, which we call ‘birdy fingers’ at School. Many children find it difficult to hold a pencil like this and so it is important grown-ups that we work together and help our children.

Supporting our children to write their name

Over the next few weeks, we are concentrating on helping our children to form the letters of their name.

We always teach the children to write a capital letter at the beginning of their name and then write small letters after:

Julie

We are also supporting the children to learn to write all the letters of the alphabet, linked to our Letters and Sounds lessons. 

The children have the opportunity to write on large paper with felt tip pens, crayons and colour pencils, whiteboards with whiteboard pens and outside on the floor with chalks.

It is also important that our children have fun with writing patterns, as this helps with their letter formation.

Mathematics

Number recognition is really important. At the end of Reception we aim for our children to name the numbers 0-20, when the numbers are shown one at a time.

In the Autumn and first half of the Spring Term, we help the children to be confident naming the numbers 0-10.

Counting objects is really important, so please, as I know you are already doing, count together in many different ways e.g. when you climb up steps, the number of plates you put out for dinner and how many jumps you can do in a minute. Even better, show your child the number after, so they understand how the action and the number link together.

At School we use the Number Blocks to help the children understand about numbers to 10 and later numbers to 20.

You can find the Number Blocks on CBeebies I Player to share with your children

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08cr24d/numberblocks-series-1-how-to-count

White Rose Maths

At School we use White Rose Maths, when we plan large and small group activities for your children.

Click on the link below to have a look at the activities 😊

https://whiterosemaths.com/resources?year=early-years