Welcome to Spring/Summer Term January-September 2024

Curriculum Updates

Early Years Goals for Toddlers

Communication and Language

  • Learn new words and combine them to make simple sentences
  • To be able to describe pictures from a familiar story
  • To listen and follow simple instructions
  • To create story lines during role play

Physical Development

  • To use one handed tool with skill (Pencil control, threading, Fixing and building)
  • Able to catch and throw ball /enjoy group games

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

  • Shows understanding and cooperates with some boundaries and routines
  • To share and wait for turns during group activities
  • To have some friends and play in small groups
  • Able to identify emotions of their own and the others


Literacy Focus

  • Listen with attention to the focus story and repeat some words and phrases
  • To look at books with interest
  • Fills in the missing word or phrase in a known rhyme, story or game, e.g. 'Humpty Dumpty sat on ..

Mathematics Focus

  • To identify basic colours, shapes and patterns and sort them out
  • To identify and use less and more /Big and small during play activities
  • To count and recognise from numbers 0-10 reliably

Understanding the World

  • To build/fix with purpose such as a tower, house, and train tracks
  • To talk about Oral health and healthy eating habits
  • Learn different topics with interest
  • To use trial and error method to complete or fix puzzles and their own creations

Expressive Art and Design

  • To use media and materials to create art work
  • Learn new songs and poems about the topics they learn
  • Beginning to use representation to communicate, e.g. drawing and painting

Early Years Goals for Pre-School

Through the topics of Winter (January), Our Neighbourhood (February/March), Environments (April/May), Spring/Summer (May/June) and Ready for School (July/August) children will be learning and achieving different goals.

The learning goals highlighted in bold are specifically targeted to those children starting school in September.

These include, but are not limited to:

Communication and Language

  • Pay attention to more than one thing at a time, which can be difficult
  • Understand 'why' questions, like: "Why do you think ...?
  • Know many rhymes, be able to talk about familiar books, and be able to tell a long story
  • Develop their communication and pronunciation
  • Be able to express a point of view and to debate when they disagree with an adult or a friend, using words as well as actions
  • Participate in small and big group and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary
  • Listening to longer stories and remember/understand much of what happens

Personal, Social and Emotional

  • Show more confidence in new social situations
  • Develop their sense of responsibility and membership of a community
  • Find solutions to conflicts and rivalries. For example, accepting that not everyone can be Spider-Man in the game, and suggesting other ideas
  • Increasingly follow rules, understanding why they are important
  • Remember rules without needing an adult to remind them
  • Talk about their feelings using words like 'happy', 'sad', 'angry' or 'worried'
  • Be increasingly independent as they get dressed and take care of their personal hygiene

Physical Development

  • Collaborate with others to manage large items, such as moving a long plank safely, carrying large hollow blocks
  • Use one-handed tools and equipment, for example, making snips in paper with scissors
  • Use a comfortable grip with good control when holding pens and pencils

Understanding the World

  • Talk about what they see, using a wide vocabulary
  • Use all their senses in hands on exploration of natural materials
  • Know some similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class
  • Describe their immediate environment using knowledge from observation, discussion, stories, non-fiction texts and maps
  • Understand some important processes and changes in the natural world around them, including the seasons and changing states of matter

Literacy

  • Say a sound for the letters in the alphabet and link them to words
  • Write recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed, and use them correctly. For example: to write a pretend shopping list or "m" for mummy
  • Write their name or names of significance
  • Anticipate - where appropriate - key events in stories
  • Demonstrate understanding of what has been read to them by retelling stories and narratives using their own words and recently introduced vocabulary

Mathematics

  • Have a deep understanding of numbers up to 20 (10 for younger group) including the composition of each number
  • Recognise quantities without counting up to 5
  • Verbally count beyond 20 (10 for younger group), recognising the pattern of the counting system
  • Compare quantities up to 20 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than or the same as the other quantity
  • Solve real life mathematical problems with numbers up to 5
  • Link numerals to amounts, for example, showing the right number of objects to match the numeral, up to 5
  • Compare quantities using language: more than, fewer than.
  • Understanding position from words alone, without pointing

Expressive Arts and Design

  • Take part in simple pretend play, using an object to represent something else even though they are not similar
  • Make imaginative and complex small worlds with blocks and construction kits