Cinnamon Brow CE Primary School

Our Role Play area will become an exciting 'Igloo' where the children will be able to explore pictures of ice, snow, polar bears and lots of penguins!  We will create lots of writing and mark making opportunities for your children to explore, with tuff trays of glitter, ice and snow to enhance their small world play.  We will be waddling like a penguin, learning the 'penguin dance' and making igloos out of construction materials and blocks, both inside and out.  

We will begin by reading and acting out 'I Can Fly' by Fifi Kuo where a little penguin discovers that although his wings don't enable him to fly through the air, he can swim in the ocean which is just like flying!  We will be watching Pingu to help support our work on penguins, as well as doing the Penguin Dance by Jack Hartman.  We will also explore the book 'Busy Penguins' by John Schindel which depicts the many movements and antics of real-life penguins, as well as encourage your child to ask lots of questions.  We will also be exploring our feelings and looking at the book, ‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas.   We will also be looking at the traditional tale, ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and talking about the characters, building houses and acting out the story together. As part of our RE before half-term, we will learn the story 'Daniel in the Lion's Den' and talk about prayer, explaining it as simply talking to God.  We will create a separate role play area of the lion's den, making lion masks and acting out the story. 

After half term, we will transform our role play area into a jungle as our theme will become 'Wild Animals.'  We will incorporate jungle leaves, vines and jungle animals, encouraging the children to think about what they might take on a jungle adventure.  We will create lots of mark making and writing opportunities, both inside and out, making lists, painting giant leaves, chalking vines and exploring God's wonderful creation through our mud kitchen and Welly Wednesday activities.  We will begin with 'Dear Zoo' by Rod Campbell and explore packages, wrap up boxes and talk about what makes a good pet.  We will then move on to the fabulous book 'Monkey and Me' by Emily Gravatt, learning it off by heart with our very own actions.  Our RE topic will be the Christian celebration of Easter and we will talk about baby animals and new life, alongside going on an Easter Egg Hunt. 

Please look at these stories and songs together and talk about what is happening with your child?  You could ask questions like, 'What did you like best?' or 'Can you remember what happened in the story?'  Children love acting out stories and you could each take on a different character.   How would that character move?  How would it speak?  Your child will really enjoy learning with you and this will really help support your child's learning in nursery.   

We will continue to teach our FOUNDATIONS TO PHONICS,(see below) alongside the intentional teaching of mathematics following the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum.  We will also continue our very popular 'Helicopter Stories' and 'Word Aware' sessions, which are great tools to aid your child's creativity, improve their language skills and help enhance personal, social and emotional development. We teach maths intentionally and in small groups, supported by 'Sarah Martin Consultancy' and the NCETM. We use Numicon to help support our teaching of number and for ideas of how to support with Numicon at home, click here.