Early Years - Ms Lonsdale 2022 - 2023

Welcome to Reception Class

Our Class Teacher is Ms Lonsdale and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Woodvine and Mrs Roddam.

If you would like to share any of your child's fantastic achievements with us, or you have any questions or concerns, please contact me via email:  

h.lonsdale@st-lawrence.lancs.sch.uk

What is the EYFS?

The Early Years Foundation Stage is the stage in your child's learning from birth to 5 years old. This is the time in school that we call Early Years. In your child's first year at school we aim to prepare the children for the rest of their school career. Children will have a range of experiences and opportunities to gain everyday skills and develop in a variety of areas of learning. We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. A link to the parents guide can be found here.

These documents will give an overview of the objectives and development statements we will be working on each term in EYFS. These overviews are not set in stone and, as each child develops at an individual rate, the children may access the development statements at different times to suit their developmental stage.

We have three adults in Early Years, a teacher and two teaching assistants.  Our class has an attached outdoor play area. In our class we enjoy a variety of adult led and self chosen indoor and outdoor activities.

Our Curriculum

We follow our own Barton St Lawrence EYFS curriculum which outlines the knowledge and skills the children will develop over their time in our EYFS class. This has been developed as a school team using both Development Matters 2021 and Birth to 5 Matters 2021. It covers the statutory programmes of study from the statutory framework for early years (2021) and allows staff to plan purposeful and developmentally appropriate activities to enhance and support the children's learning. This document can be downloaded from the files section at the bottom of the page. 

Each half term the children's interests will lead us to a topic to cover as a context for learning. Examples of previous topic webs can be found in our files section. Our current topic web for "Kings and Queens" can also be found as a digital download. 

All of our work from the provision in the classroom is recorded using the Class Dojo. If you would like to see your child's learning journey, and comment on any of the records, please log in through Class Dojo for up to date images and records. 

Thank you to those of you who were able to join us at our "Meet the Teacher" night. If you were unable to attend, a link to the powerpoint can be found in our files section below. 

Grandpa's Suitcase

We start each topic with an exciting look through Grandpa's suitcase. Each half term Grandpa fills the suitcase with objects to spark our curiosity into our new topic. We ask questions, explain our prior knowledge of a subject and decide what we would like to learn moving forward. This helps Mrs Rogerson to plan a really exciting topic that is interesting and challenging for us all to learn from. 

Bread Making

While learning about the story of The Little Red Hen, we made our own bread. We followed the instructions to measure and mix the bread dough before kneading and shaping bread rolls. We baked them in the oven and, because everyone had helped to make the bread, we took a dough ball home to eat for our tea. It was delicious!

Amazing models

We have a very well stocked arts and crafts area in our classroom where we can create models following our own interests and ideas. Here are a few of the models we have made recently. 

Descriptive writing 

To start our topic of Dinosaurs, we thought of as many "wow words" to describe them as we can. Our work led us to create a book "That's not my dinosaur..." a pdf version of the book can be found in the files section. 

Shape Study

We have been learning about 2D shapes, their names and their properties. We have been investigating the attribute blocks by making pictures from the shapes.

Treasure Maps

Recently there has been a real interest into pirates and treasure maps amongst some of the children. They have been making their own treasure maps, boats and pirate outfits from the construction and junk modelling materials. Some of the children have worked hard on labelling the maps using their phonic knowledge and emergent writing. 

Owl Babies

One of our focus stories during the Autumn term was Owl Babies. We watched videos of owls, listened to recordings of them calling to each other and explored the texture of feathers. Here are some of our representations of owls made independently in the continuous provision.

Portrait Study

As part of our first topic of "I am Special" we looked closely at our faces and those of other people. We made portaits of ourselves and our friends in a range of different styles and media. Here are a few of the portraits we made.

Outdoor Artwork

In the garden we have been looking closely at the plants and flowers. We decided to make some hammer art using some of the natural materials we could find. Here is some of our artwork. One of the questions we are still trying to answer is "Why will a brown Autumn leaf not make a picture?" Do you know?

Our Amazing Work

Have a look at some of the wonderful work we have completed using Purple Mash.

• Nativity Photographs 2021