Spring 2 2024

 
Seahorses
 
Spring 2
 
 
 
 
In the Garden
 
 

Personal and Social Development

In the second part of our Spring Term our newest Seahorses have settled in well and are becoming more independent and familiar with the rules and expectations.  The oldest Seahorses play an important role, supporting the younger Seahorses, helping them to settle in and this is great!   All children are encouraged to follow the rules, share and learn to work with different children.  Through adult led activities, the children will develop more focus and concentration. 

Physical Development

PE in the hall will continue as this is something all the children have loved, Tuesdays are becoming their favourite day!  Squiggle While You Wiggle will continue, teaching our new Seahorses how it’s done!  As skills in cutting develop, the children will gain more control and accuracy, becoming more independent when cutting out.  Monster Phonics continues for all Seahorses.  Letter formation will become a focus, especially the letters in the children's names so they become confident forming the letters in their name correctly.   

 

Understanding the World

We will continue to talk about and monitor the weather as we move through the seasons as well as continuing to learn about things we can do to care about our planet, something the children have shown an interest in.  

Alongside this we will be learning about growing, planting seeds and caring for them as they grow.  We will learn what plants need to grow and compare this to animals and humans.  We will also look at habitats, learning the names of different habitats and what we might find there, beginning to learn about how things are needed for the survival of certain creatures. 

Here is a word mat with some of our 'Growing' topic words.  See which ones your child knows and uses.  Talk about any they are unsure of.

Literacy
The children love doing Monster Phonics!  Each day they learn about different types of sounds, have fun with sounds and describe the different sounds they hear.  Phonics games and activities follow on from the learning time which the children play with adults and independently.  Writing is modelled by adults so the children become aware of the difference between writing and drawing.  The children will be encouraged to do both and may be able to use some recognisable letters, perhaps not correctly at this stage.  
Here is a phonics game you could play.  At this stage, focus on the initial sound only, stressing the sound to make it obvious, eg c-c-c-at.
Maths         Our new Seahorses will work on numbers 0 to 3, counting and saying numbers in the right order.  The older Seahorses with work with numbers up to 5, building on the learning to 3 they have already done.  The children will represent numbers using marks such as tallies or spots and do number hunts inside and outside.   The  children also work on positional language,  building on the learning they have done previously to become more familiar with; on, in, under, next to, between, inside.

Shape     The children will learn to recognise and match shapes through shape hunts and matching games.  They will be taught the steps to take to help to complete simple jigsaws, eg find the corners first, look for the straight sides, are the pieces the right way up, etc.