Our typical day
Although we only spend 3 hours at school each day we are busy from the moment we step into the classroom.
We have to self register ourselves, choose an activity and interact with our friends and then tidy away - and that's before we start our learning!
We then have group time, we do feelings and phonics first where we say how we are feeling and give reasons why. Here we often talk about what we have had for breakfast or lunch and who has brought us to school. We are learning how to organise out speech into sentences, answer and sometimes ask questions and share with a small group of people our thoughts and feelings. We are also leaning how to take turns and listen to others when they talk.
Then we do phonics where we learn about different sounds and letters in the alphabet, we learn to listen and to talk, share stories and ideas an have a chance to express ourselves using language.
Next we do Groovy Movers - a chance to get up and move! This is a pre-writing group session. We strengthen our shoulder, elbow, wrist and finger muscles which will help us when it comes to mark making and writing. This group session is really different to others. It can be sat down using tweezers to find diamonds hidden in rice or thread cheerios onto skewers. Or it can be up and about on our feet rolling tyres round the outside area or throwing and catching balls and beanbags. It all helps when it comes to mark making and drawing which we do often.
Then we have snack time. We are learning to make choices and use our manners at the table.
Next it is choosing time - the time we love as it is our turn to choose what learning we are going to do. The activities change weekly and we have access to the whole Foundation unit.
After we have tidied away at the end of choosing time it is now time for a maths session - this can be counting or investigating shapes. This session is done in groups again and gives us a chance to learn about numbers and shapes, about how to organise numbers and write them and to look at shapes and how everyday objects often have simple shapes in them.
Our last bit of learning is tickets time! We have to learn to recognise our names, take our tickets back to match them to our pegs and then put coats on ready for hometime.
We are very busy each day ... when the children say they haven't done anything at school they are fibbing! We have done so much that it is very hard to put it all down.
Its been a short term but busy as always in Foundation!
We welcomed in some new starters at the beginning of the term and they have all settled in so well that it seems like they have always been here!
We have had a visit from a rather large truck and had some road safety advice - even the teachers got to sit in the truck! There are photographs of this displayed in our cloakroom.
We introduced the reward wrist bands this term too - every week the teachers will pick 3 children who have done something to stand out that week. 1 for achieving something, 1 for behaviour and 1 for trying really hard. We display a photograph of these children and the reason why they got the reward wrist band on a display board in the cloakroom for all parents to see.
We have done so much this half term - here is a very short list of the activities we have had the opportunity to take part in at school this half term:
As you can see we have been really busy and do so much more each day than the list suggests!