EYFS

Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Welcome to all our Cedar Park children and their families.

We look forward to an action packed half-term full of fun learning.

Please see a member of staff if you have any questions.

Mrs Franek and Mrs Bevins

The EYFS Team:

Mrs Franek - Nursery teacher, Forest School and Early Years Lead

Mrs Bevins - Reception teacher

and our fantastic teaching assistants:

Nursery based

Mrs Delmaine (all day Monday-Thursday)

Miss Jones (all day Monday-Friday)

Reception based

Mrs Owen (all day Wednesday - Friday)

Mrs Warner (all day Monday, Tuesday and Friday)

Nursery and Reception based

Mrs Van EYFS PPA teacher cover (all day Monday-Friday)

Our topic for Summer 2 is:
Adventures

We are looking forward to an action packed half-term full of fun learning!

Hello everyone,

Our summer 2 topic is 'Adventures'.

Week 1: Sea Animals – under the sea adventures. Do you know what you might find under the sea? How many sea animals can you name? Where will you find coral? What do dolphins eat? Do sharks live in parks or somewhere else? How do you know if there is a shark in the water? What is an ocean? Why is the sea salty? What do we need water for? Can you name different types of water sources, for example, a lake?

Key texts:
Nursery: Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae and Shark in the Park, by Nick Sharratt
Reception: The Storm Whale, by Benji Davies (for the next few weeks) with additional picture book during shared reading activities.

Can you draw a picture of your favourite sea creature and label it? Can you find out some information about sharks – one or two facts?

Weeks 2 and 3: Pirate adventures! Father's Day celebration (18th June) and a special free drama workshop on Wednesday 21st (Peter Pan - pirates and mermaids).
Do you know any pirate songs or rhymes? What is a pirate ship’s flag called?

Key texts: Various picture story books, poems and rhymes, and drawing a map

Can you make a flag for a pirate’s ship or a treasure map? Can you make a treasure box using junk materials? What would you put inside it? Can you write one or two sentences about a pirate adventure, for example, finding treasure on an island or travelling on a stormy sea?

Week 4: Keeping fit and sports day (Wednesday 28th June)
What does it mean to 'keep fit'? Which parts of our bodies do we use when we jump, hop, skip, climb. run? Which school house are you in? What does it mean to be part of a team? What does 'compete' mean? Which house won the cup in KS2 last year? And KS1 / EYFS?

Weeks 5 and 6: Transition morning (Tuesday 4th July) / EYFS Superheroes Event (Wednesday 5th July) - more news to follow after May half-term.
Superheroes – What is a superhero? Can you name some superhero characters? What sort of power would you like to have and why? Do you know how to be safe when you’re near water? Be a brilliant superhero and find out some important facts about staying safe when you’re near any type of water. What power could you have using water? How strong are you? What sort of super things can you do, for example ride a bike, skip, run fast and change directions, jump, hop, set the table, wash-up, make your bed etc? Can anyone be a superhero? Can you name some water sports? Are you learning to swim? What do you need to do to work as part of a team?

Key texts:
Nursery: Max, by Bob Graham / Super Daisy, by Kes Gray
Reception: TBC

Can you write a message to a superhero to find out more about them? Or write a sentence about your favourite superhero character and share it with our class? You could draw your superhero and add a speech bubble with some action words, for example Pow! And Zap!

Week 7: New adventures and moving on (new class / school).
What is an adventure? Can you talk about one of your favourite adventures? Who was with you and what exciting things did you do?

Key texts: Oliver Who Travelled Far and Wide and non-fiction books

Try making some of the following things:
1.   A map
2.   A travel page of your favourite place and then add some labels? For example, a beach scene and label it ‘rock pool’ / ‘sandcastle’ / ‘beach hut’ / ‘crab’ / ‘picnic food’ etc.
3.   A holiday travel ticket or voucher – don’t forget to add you name and how much the ticket cost
4.   A water safety poster
Please do share your ideas with us.

Please feel free to add any learning on to Tapestry and we can show the class.

Mrs Franek and Mrs Bevins

For further information about our learning, please look out for our half-termly EYFS Curriculum Newsletter which will shortly be available and located at the bottom of this page, in addition to our Tapestry posts.

Power Maths

https://www.pearson.com/international-schools/british-curriculum/primary-curriculum/power-maths.html

https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/international-schools/pdfs/primary-curriculum/power-maths/Power-Maths-programme-guide.pdf

Read to Write

https://www.literacycounts.co.uk/readtowrite

A weekly guide:

Wednesday (return day)
Reading and shared reading books, reading records and library books:
These need to be returned so they can be changed and ready to go home every Friday.
Books will sent home during Week 4 (week beginning 26.09.22).
Nursery children will not have a shared book until later in the term.

Friday
Reading and shared reading books and reading records (Reception children only) :
Books go home. Please make a short comment about your child's reading and interest in their book/s. If you have any queries, please come and see me. Reading books and records should be kept in your child's book bag every day as they may be shared with an adult in school (see above for return details).

Library day:
We have a fantastic school library with an excellent range of picture books for our EYFS children to enjoy choosing from and to share with their family at home.
We plan to visit the library every Friday to select one book to bring home every week. Please make sure that your child's library book is returned after five days (the following Wednesday morning). Unfortunately, we are not able to issue a new book unless the previous one has been returned.

PE:
Children wear their PE kit to school for the day. They can wear shorts or their usual jogging bottoms with their House T-shirt.

General Information:

Our Philosophy

At Cedar Park School, our philosophy is to value every child as a unique individual, who enjoys learning and thinking for him or herself. Our aim within the Early Years Foundation Stage is to provide a happy, safe and stimulating environment, which allows all children to feel secure and valued and therefore ready and eager to learn. We provide a supportive and secure environment in which every child can flourish and learn at their own pace and in their own individual way. Our role is to stimulate and encourage their development and enjoyment of learning through a variety of different activities, both adult directed and child initiated in secure indoor and outdoor situations.

We believe the relationships which the children develop in the Early Years, with each other and with our staff, are central to their happiness and will lay the best possible foundation for them to become independent lifelong learners.

Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum Intent

Children in our Early Years phase follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, which consists of seven areas of learning. We teach children by ensuring challenging, playful opportunities across both the prime and specific areas of learning. We recognise that all children develop and learn at different rates and so our EYFS curriculum is designed flexibly to meet the needs of all individuals. We support individual learning through our skilful interactions and observations which lead to detailed next step planning. The Characteristics of Effective Learning underpin our curriculum and pupils learning, through an enabling and well-planned environment we ensure we provide meaningful opportunities for playing and learning, active learning and creating and thinking critically. As children utilise and develop these characteristics, they become effective and motivated learners who demonstrate high levels of well-being and involvement.

Characteristics of Effective Learning

The characteristics of effective learning underpin our pupils learning within the Early Years Foundation Stage. The ways in which they engage with others and their environment – playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically – underpin learning and development across all areas and support children to remain effective and motivated learners. We make judgements about a child's demonstration of the Characteristics of Effective Learning at their particular age / stage of development and whether or not the learning behaviours defined within these characteristics describes the child.

Leuven Scales of Well Being and Involvement and Well Being

The Leuven Scales acknowledge the critical importance of a child’s emotional well-being on the quality and depth of learning. We use the Leuven Scales to indicate a child's level of Well-Being and Involvement at the time of assessment (low, medium or high level).

Well-being is defined as ‘the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy’. Involvement is defined as ‘the fact of being involved with or participating in something’. The Leuven Scales support accurate and authentic summative assessment of a child’s knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours.

Tapestry

We use Tapestry to record children’s knowledge, skills and learning dispositions in individual learning journals, and to assess the characteristics of effective learning. It is a consistent and reliable way of demonstrating progress through the EYFS.

Through daily observation and interaction, we can build a rich and accurate understanding of each child across all aspects of learning and development. Observations are shared with families. You can share all the wonderful things you do with your child at home using Tapestry, by uploading via the website or App.

Whilst we would love to show you all the wonderful things your child has been doing throughout the day, it is not practical as we value the importance of being with the children and not always having a tablet in between us. Therefore, some weeks you will have more observations than others because we have been engaging and playing and didn’t want to stop the flow to take a photograph or video clip. Our observations are then used to support our ongoing assessments on Target Tracker.

Assessments are meaningful and impact on our children’s learning and development as we use them to inform next steps, which are personalised and challenging.

At the end of Reception, learning journals can be downloaded for you to keep and treasure.

Forest School at Cedar Park

Forest School is a magical place....

Forest School is an inspirational process that offers all learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a natural environment with trees.

Principles Of Forest School:

Forest school takes place in a woodland setting on site which children cannot access during break times; this supports the development of a relationship between the learner and the natural world.

Forest School uses a range of learner-centred processes to create a community for development and learning.

Forest School aims to promote the holistic development of all those involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners.

Forest School offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and to themselves.

Thank you for your support.

Please feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Mrs Franek (Forest School Lead)

Further information about the EYFS can be found on 'Parent Zone' - 'Information for EYFS Parents' and on Tapestry.