During your child’s first year at school we deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage by using the ‘Come and See’ Catholic topics as a starting point for our learning. In addition to this we also consider individual children’s interests and needs, to provide a holistic curriculum that supports each child’s ongoing learning and development.
We offer a continuous play-based approach where children can explore their indoor and outdoor school environment whilst engaging in challenging activities, interesting topics and learning through first hand experiences.
Miss Clark – Class Teacher
Mrs Winton – Early Years Educator
Mrs Rafferty – Class PPA Teacher
Welcome Bethlehem families
Catholic Education
Within the Catholic Education we will explore our class name 'Bethlehem' and our class saint 'Mary'. The children will develop their understanding of their faith through candle time, prayers and class worship as well as religious education inputs and activities.
The RE 'come and see' topics include;
House Colours
Your child will have been allocated a house colour; they will be awarded house points for their house. In Bethlehem, we collect 'bricks' to represent house points.
Red house team - St Richards
Green house team - St Bernadettes
Yellow house team - St Wilfrids
Blue house team - St Clares
Tapestry
We will use Tapestry as a record of your child's individual learning journey; it allows us to share photographs and videos, WOW moments and celebrate successes. Using tapestry helps assessment and planning within class so that we can plan exciting activities and events of interest and support for your children.
Mrs Winton and myself will also use Tapestry as a communication tool to share class messages, updates and information to you all.
Tapestry also allows your to share WOW moments from home.
Reading
Please read with your children daily, using their school book to support their early reading skills. We will initially sending home story books to be shared together which promote rhyme and word pattern. Other fiction and non-fiction books will continue to engage their imagination and develop their vocabulary.
Birthdays
On your child’s birthday, we ask that they do not bring sweets for their friends, but if they would like to donate a book to the class for the book corner instead, then it would be greatly appreciated. They can also come to school in their own clothes on their birthday, or on the nearest school day if their birthday falls at the weekend.
Daily
Each day at school, please make sure your child brings;
- A water bottle with fresh water.
- Labelled jumper/cardigan.
- Labelled coat for wet weather.
- Fresh fruit or vegetable snack for snack time (1 portion of fruit or vegetable is roughly equivalent to what your child can hold in the palm of their hand). Please ensure the snack is labelled, either in a tub or masking tape is great to write on and stick on bananas etc.
- Their bookbag, reading record and books.
Topic: Celebrating
We will begin our new RE topic ‘Celebrating’ from Monday 4th January 2021.
Together we will look at celebrations the children have experienced at home, what a celebration is and how the parish family celebrates.
An outline of the exploration and learning covered in our celebrating topic:
Questions the children may be asked include:
Our key vocabulary will include:
Church, priest, celebrate, celebrating, Parish family, family, community, celebration, party, memory, Father, altar, Temple and parish
Alongside our RE topic ‘celebrating’ we will look at the celebrations held within countries around the world. Within this we will also do some cooking and tasting, dancing, flag making and more.
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Miss Clark
Class teacher