Early Years: Matisse 

Your class teacher is Miss Flint. 

Miss Collings and Mrs Spash are your learning support assistants and will work with you in your class. 

We do a lot of learning outside so don't forget to bring in your wellies, sun hat, waterproof jacket and waterproof over trousers!

We have three very important learning dinosaurs! They will get the chance to come home with you if you show their learning behaviours. 

Autumn Term 1

 We started school! All the adults are super proud of how well we started school. We learnt the story 'We're going on a bear hunt' and loved changing the story into different versions: 

-We're going on a leaf hunt

-We're going on a stick hunt 

-We're going on a monster hunt etc... 

We enjoyed counting using Autumnal objects and learning all about the weather in Autumn. 

We have begun our RWI phonics and have learnt: 

Autumn Term 2 

This half term we are trying to catch The Gingerbread man. We will be having an immersion day making our own edible and puppet Gingerbread man whilst learning the story.

Our topic is called Light and Dark. We will be investigating how our environment changes in Winter including the days getting shorter. We will be learning about polar animals, including a penguin experience at Colchester Zoo. 

The countdown to Christmas is on! We will be making lots of decorations and making our learning environment feel super festive. 

In RWI we will be recapping last half terms sounds and learning the remaining Set 1 single sounds. 

Spring Term 1

This half term we are learning all about space! 

This week a rocket has crash landed in our classroom: Matisse have been busy investigating the clues to find out who it belongs to. We receieved a message from Q Pootle 5 explaining that his friend T Pootle 7 was lost somewhere in the UK and could we help! We used our inference skills and discovered that the rocket must be hers. Using maps, we searched the school for her. 

We are looking forward to learning how people live in space and we will be learning the names of the planets. We will also be learning all about the significant people associated with space: Neil Armstrong, Tim Peake and Mae Jemison.

Spring Term 2

This half term we are learning all about animals. 

We have looked at a range of habitats including the rain-forest, the African Savannah, Australian bush and the Great Barrier Reef. We have looked at what animals live there and why they live there. Additionally, we have tried to group the animals into carnivores, omnivores and herbivores. 

Next, we will be learning all about the prehistoric animals: the dinosaurs. We will be considering what would happen if dinosaurs came back in 2023. 

Summer 1: 

This half term Matisse have been learning about different traditional tales. We began our learning by discovering a crime scene; after careful investigation we discovered it was Goldilocks. We helped the Three Bears track down Goldilocks by learning how to be a police officer. We were lucky to receive a visit from the Local Police to teach us how to be the best investigators. During the half term we have spent time focusing on the character The Big Bad Wolf and the stories he features in including Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. We have enjoyed reading alternative versions of these stories and discussing if the Big Bad Wolf is really bad or just misunderstood. 

Summer 2: 

Our Topic this half term is 'In the garden', we returned from half term to discover a beanstalk in our classroom, but where may it lead? We have begun growing our own Beanstalks and look forward to monitoring their progress. Over the upcoming weeks we will be thinking about growing vegetables, how to care for plants and what minibeasts we can find in the garden; including our own wormery and watching caterpillars transform into Butterflies.