What a super start to school our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have had over the past few weeks! We have been so impressed with how brilliantly they have settled into the school routine, utilising their new environments and forming new friendships with their peers and all of the teachers too! 

The children have been exploring the different areas in their own classroom and investigating our outdoor areas too. They have been learning and applying some new skills, such as putting their pictures and belongings in their drawers and learning how to be independent at school by changing their own shoes to wellies so that they are ready for the woodlands. The children are embracing the responsibility of hanging up their coat, putting away their bags and looking after their water bottles too!  As the Autumn weather begins to show, keep practicing those self-help skills, such as encouraging your child to put on their own coat and doing it up too!

We have been incredibly impressed with all of the 'Me and My Family' posters that you took your time to do over the summer holidays. These posters have gone up on the wall in the children's 'special space' and they have felt comforted and excited to share them with their new friends and teachers. We have loved spending time looking at the posters, learning more about the children and their families. It has given us all a chance to bond over things that are important so that they feel valued, safe and happy in our classrooms. 

Our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have shown great enthusiasm towards learning at school and they were extremely excited to take home their first ever phonics reading book this week! The children have impressed us with their 'fast eyes' in maths when subitising and they have been creating counting wands to order and tag numbers. Some children have had a go at exploring natural patterns in the woodlands using objects such as conkers, stones, sticks and leaves! 

Last week we were reading The Colour Monster and using our schools  'Zones of Regulation' to support the children to understand their emotions and how we look, feel and act when we experience these different feelings. The children loved designing their own Colour Monster as well as acting out the different expressions represented by the colours! We have displayed a picture of the children acting out these emotions in our classrooms so that the children can show us how they are feeling each day! We have also been learning about what our amazing bodies can do and we have been reading project books, such as 'Your Body is Awesome!' This has inspired the children to challenge themselves to use their bodies in different ways such as balancing, hopping and risk taking in the woodlands! 

During project, the children have been using mirrors to notice their own features in their reflections. After creating a giant self-portrait as a class and discussing the different facial features we have, the children were eager to get busy with designing and creating their own self-portrait using a mirror to help them along the way. The children have been looking at large printed out photographs of their own faces and they all had great fun cutting their photograph into 4 pieces and putting it back together like a jigsaw puzzle! This gave the children the opportunity to talk about the different features on their face as well as developing their problem solving and critical thinking skills!

We are so incredibly proud of how our wonderful Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have settled into school. It is SO great to see them all exploring, designing, creating and investigating in their new environments with big smiles on their faces! 

At FPIS we have used the EYFS framework and Development Matters as a starting point when designing an ambitious, inclusive curriculum which reflects our school community and provides no limits or barriers to children’s achievements. Throughout the year this enhanced through three projects, starting with 'Me and My Family!' 

Here is our project overview for this term. It includes key language and questions that the children will be covering each week, key project texts and some helpful tips for supporting your child at home. Our overviews will be shared with families via Seesaw at the start of each project. 

Thank you to all those who came along to our Busy Learning afternoon today. If you were unable to join us, we will be sharing information via Seesaw and well as signposting the relevant links on our school website.

Our Key Stage 1 children have been busy learning all about our School Responsibilities and Values. To help us think about these in a fun and creative way we have once again been visited by Simon Mole, a well-known person in our local community who is a Poet and an Author. Simon ran a workshop with each class focusing on rhymes and raps. In Year 2 he focused on the kennings style of poetry. We then had the time to mind map our ideas associated with each responsibility and value. Year 2 focused on our Values and Year 1 focused on our School Responsibilities. A creative writing team was chosen from each class to work closely with Simon to come up with some imaginative and exciting raps and poems all about our School Responsibilities and Values and what they mean to us.

On Friday KS1 came together to share their poems and raps they have been busy practising. Look out for these on Seesaw...coming soon! :-)

A final reminder that if you would like to purchase a signed copy of one of Simon's poetry books today is the deadline to order - please see the letter sent via the School App on the 17th of September.

To celebrate the end of our Establishment Phase, the KS1 children met in the hall to perform their school responsibilities and values raps that they had written with Simon Mole. It was a great opportunity to share our creative enthusiasm with each other. Mrs Indge was our special guest and loved hearing all of the children's imaginative ways to describe what our school responsibilities and values mean to us! Thanks once again to Simon Mole for helping our exciting ideas come to life!

Our exciting Key Stage 1 has been developed over the last few years to be a purposeful, exciting and engaging curriculum which reflects our school community and the interests of our children. We have three exciting projects which begin at the start of each term. Our Autumn project for both Year 1 and Year 2 is called 'Super-Duper Heroes'. We plan our projects carefully and our motto is that everything in our curriculum has to earn its place! 

As well as the focus on our core subjects; Maths and English we have been evolving our Foundation Subjects to make them even better than they were before! For each project we will have the core subject focuses and our 'Sticky Knowledge'. This term refers to all of the important facts that we want our children to be continually exposed to and reflect on this learning at the end of each project. Today you will be receiving our Autumn Project Overviews via Seesaw which will include our core subjects, RE, PE, key dates for your diary, the 'Sticky Knowledge' for the term and as always our Brilliant Beginning, Magnificent Middle and Excellent Ending events which are at the heart of each project we teach. Our Project Overviews will be pinned to the top of your child's Seesaw account to ensure that it is easy to find!

Please do come along to our Busy Learning Afternoon to find out more and visit our learning environments.

Year 1: Wednesday 8th October 2.00-3.00pm

Year 2: Tuesday 7th October 2.00-3.00pm