Reception Curriculum NewsletterSpring 2025
Joy Excellence Service
For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
Song of Solomon 2:11-12
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Our topics for the Spring term are named “Galilee to Jerusalem” and “Desert to Garden”.
ln our first topic, we will learn that the Magi visited Jesus with gifts and that Jesus is God’s Son who came for everyone. We will also read about when Jesus blessed the little children (Mk 10:13-16) and the Feeding of the 5000 (Jn 6:1-14). We will link our scriptural learning to our Catholic celebration as we explore why the Glory Be is a special prayer and what it means. During our second topic, we will learn that Lent is a time to care for others. The children will learn the key events of Holy Week, especially Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Finally, they will learn the great commandment to: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Lk 10:25-28).
RSHE
This term, our aim is that the children will learn that we are all unique with our own gifts and talents. We are made in God's image so whilst we may have similarities, differences are part of God's plan. The children will learn more about their bodies and that they need to look after them. They will begin to understand why it is important to be healthy and how to stay healthy by eating well, exercising and maintaining good hygiene. As the term goes on, the children will be learning that we all have different likes and dislikes and the importance of respecting this. They will continue to build on their emotional literacy and know that they have choices but that these choices may also impact on others. Part of this is to know we can say sorry if we need to and to forgive like Jesus.
COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE
This term, the children will be continuing to develop their listening and attention skills. They will be able to practise these skills through turn taking activities and games and using their words to resolve problems, rather than relying on an adult to speak for them. The aim is to help them organise their thinking, whist also considering the listener. The children will be encouraged to start asking questions to further their understanding and knowledge of how things work and to start to explain that knowledge through the vocabulary that they are learning. During the first half of this term, our focus will be on using the past tense so that the children can recount past events clearly.
PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
This term, we will be supporting the children to develop the skills needed to manage their own needs. They will be developing their emotional literacy in order to be able to communicate how they feel and what they need. Over the term, the children will also begin to reflect on their work and the work of others, and be encouraged to take pride in their achievements, whilst also building resilience when something has been challenging for them. This could be writing, building a model or understanding some maths work. It is important they know their perseverance is an accomplishment and has rewards.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
The children will continue to have access to a range of fine and gross motor activities this term. This will include painting and drawing, threading and building, using both small and large materials. As the weather improves, they will have access to our wonderful clamber tree again, developing their balancing skills and building their confidence in their ability to balance and jump. We will continue to talk about being healthy and ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This will be explored through stories such as 'Dave and The Tooth Fairy' and 'Even Superheroes Need Sleep'. We will also have a visit from a local dentist to talk to the children about their oral hygiene and why it is so important.
LITERACY
This term, we will be focusing on non-fiction books about Space. Our main focus text will be The National Geographic’s “First Big Book of Space”. After half term, our texts will be about People Who Help us. For example, “The Hundred Decker Bus” and “The Jolly Postman”. These focus texts will give the children lots of inspiration to make different forms of writing such as non-fiction, call logs, patient notes and letters. The children will have opportunities to sequence stories, recalling the main points and retelling them in their own words. We will encourage the children to orally retell the stories by setting up role play areas and small world play themed around our focus text. In terms of writing skills, we will continue to work on pencil grip and letter formation. We will be supporting the children in holding longer sentences in their head and writing each word more independently. We will be reinforcing the importance of finger spaces, capital letters and full stops.
PHONICS
The children will continue daily phonics and reading sessions. They will be building on their knowledge from Autumn term as we start learning Phase 3 sounds and words. As well as their segmenting and blending, the children will continue to expand their bank of 'tricky' words which will include words such as 'they', 'my', 'was', 'you' and 'are'. By the end of the Spring term, the children will have been introduced to the vowel digraphs: ai, ee, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, and the trigraph 'igh'. They will continue to write 2 or 3 spellings each day in our phonics lessons; seeing the word, listening to the word, recognising the phonemes and writing down the corresponding graphemes.
MATHEMATICS
In maths, the children will continue to develop their subitising and counting skills and explore the composition of numbers within and beyond 5. We will build upon their understanding of the counting sequence and link cardinality and ordinality through the ‘staircase’ pattern. They will begin to identify when two sets are equal or unequal and understand two equal groups as doubles. They will embed their understanding of the connection between quantities and numerals. The children will learn to identify missing parts for numbers within 5. We will explore the structure of the numbers 6 and 7, building on their knowledge of composition by learning to see them as ‘5 and a bit’. This will help them to relate composition to finger patterns and the Hungarian number frame. We will teach the children to sort odd and even numbers according to their ‘shape’.
UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD
Our non-fiction texts and related activities this term, will allow the children to gain a wealth of knowledge about space and planets in particular. They will learn to compare Earth to the other planets in our solar system. They will have opportunities to explore models of the solar system and carry out experiments to find out more about space. Learning about space can also help children to develop a sense of respect for the planet, which can encourage them to take steps to protect it. As the children learn about people who help us, we will encourage them to talk about times they have been helped by doctors, dentists, opticians etc, and people they know who have service jobs. We will talk about the different roles people play in our community.
EXPRESSIVE ARTS AND DESIGN
This term, the children will be learning about portraits by Matisse and Picasso. ln particular, we will be focussing on their line drawings, to give the children a strong understanding of the shapes that make up their face and how to draw them. As always, many resources are available to the children during their independent learning time so that they can experiment and express themselves creatively. As we explore various texts, we will use these as a springboard to encourage the children to create different things in different ways. For example, we will provide the resources and techniques needed to create their own toy emergency vehicle, and we will do process art to create the different planets in our solar system.
JOY EXCELLENCE SERVICE
