St Joseph's Roman CatholicPrimary School
To grow daily in God's love, blossoming in His will
EYFS
Welcome to the EYFS class page, I hope to update this page regularly with pictures of our learning in the Foundation class of reception "chicks" and nursery "bunnies".
Pictures can also often be found in the gallery.
A typical day in the EYFS class:
We pride ourselves in following a child-centred approach in the EYFS class and try to meet the individual needs of all children wherever possible. With this in mind there is a great deal of flexibility in our planning, but we do tend to have familiar daily routines as follows:
9.45-9.55 children arrive in school and are taught to develop independence in putting their book bags and water bottles in the appropriate boxes and hanging up their coats before making their lunch choices. Carefully selected and enhanced learning resources are available for children to access from the moment they arrive- we call this the continuous provision. They also take part in self-registration, finding their name card and adding to the display, gradually introducing signing in for the reception children and where appropriate, later in the Summer term for the nursery children.
Every child has a named key person and time is given for the children to spend time with them for a welcome or short group discussion at the beginning of the day.
9.15: Once everyone is settled, we begin our day with a morning prayer. This is followed by separate nursery and reception phonics teaching sessions.
Children in the EYFS have a morning snack of fruit and water, always supervised by an adult, either in a large group or in small groups eating and chatting at the table and increasing their skills of independence and awareness of the need to recycle our plastic waste and compost our fruit waste. On a regular basis, we offer other snacks such as warm toast which they butter themselves or crackers and cheese spread and other seasonal treats. Children then have more access to continuous indoor and outdoor provision, adult led group and individual activities to practise the skills we are learning.
11.00-11.15: The children are all involved in tidying our indoor and outdoor learning areas and grow to love the responsibility of doing this. We will often have a short playtime to enable the children to have a run around in the fresh air before gathering together indoors for a short, focussed mathematics teaching session with reception and nursery in separate groups. We follow the White Rose maths scheme and adapt our teaching to try and meet the needs of all the individual children.
11.45: The morning session ends by praying a simple version of the Examen, when we say our "Thank you", our "Sorry" and our "Promise" to God, this is followed by our lunchtime prayer. The "morning only" nursery children then go home while others join the reception children in the dining hall for lunch followed by playtime/exercise time.
1.00pm: The afternoon session begins at 1.00pm with register and our Mission statement prayer, often followed by "wake and shake". After this, there will be separate short reception and nursery teaching sessions before more adult-led and self-chosen learning activities using the indoor and outdoor environments. These teaching sessions are either RE, topic based activities relating to the Communication and Language, Understanding of the World and Expressive Arts and Design aspects of the EYFS curriculum.
Children then have more access to continuous indoor and outdoor provision, adult led group and individual activities to practise the skills we are learning. Children will pour their own milk at the "milk bar" during the afternoon.
2.50 pm: Before we know it, it's all hands on deck to tidy the indoor and outdoor areas ready for Celebration of the Word, story time and our home time prayers.
A typical week in the EYFS class:
"Movement Monday": The children will begin their week with a whole school collective worship led by Mrs McCormack.
This year our PE lessons will take place on Mondays. These lessons will be taught indoors or outdoors, depending on the skills focus and the weather, so children will need to come to school wearing PE kit and trainers on Mondays.
Library book exchange is on Monday morning each week. (Tuesday for the children who don't attend nursery on Monday). Don't forget to bring your books back each week to work towards a book mark!
"Tiring Tuesdays" is an opportunity for all children to take full advantage of our outdoor grassy area, for lots of fun gross motor skills development and team work activities.
As part of our celebration of the word, children will either pray the Rosary or take part in Godly Play activities.
Wonderful Wednesdays: Reading book collection for reception children will be on Wednesday each week, with new books sent home on Thursdays. Please ensure you spend time reading these books with your children and return them on Wednesday morning.
Thankful Thursdays: The staff will be reflecting on those children who have gone the "extra mile" this week to earn a reward certificate. Parent texts will be sent out on Thursday lunch times. As part of our celebration of the word, children will either pray the Rosary or take part in Godly Play activities. Reception children will bring home their new reading books for the week.
Fun Fridays: We hope to make every day at St Joseph's fun, but on Fridays we try to ensure that we combat our tiredness at the end of a busy week by laughing as we learn and giggling as we go!
Whole school worship and celebration of achievements assembly is held every Friday morning at 9.15pm.
Joseph Bear's adventures from the previous weekend are shared with the class before he choses where he will hopefully visit next.
A relaxed afternoon of creative art activities or outdoor fun is followed by a story to end the week and child led Celebration of the Word.
:
First days in our new EYFS classroom and outdoor area September, 2023
We are so excited to welcome our children into the brand new EYFS classroom this week, the staff and children started the new school year with huge smiles, chatter and enthusiasm. A wonderful, happy time in the history of St Joseph's!