Autumn 2 2025
Reception have settled beautifully into life as RiseParkers and we are so excited to continue our learning. This half term in Reception, our learning will be centred around a wonderful selection of stories that explore light, dark, and special celebrations. Through The Dark, we will learn about feelings of fear and bravery, while The Quiet Little Firework helps us celebrate Bonfire Night and understand how fireworks light up the sky. The Lights that Dance in the Night will introduce us to the magic of the Northern Lights, inspiring creativity and awe. With Peggy the Always Sorry Pigeon, we will think about kindness, friendship, and saying sorry. As we move closer to Christmas, The Christmas Story will help us learn about the Nativity and the importance of giving and love, and Stickman will remind us of family, adventure, and belonging. It will be a half term full of wonder, warmth, and festive fun! We’ll also learn about important events such as Bonfire Night, discovering why we celebrate with fireworks; Remembrance Day, when we show respect and remember those who helped keep us safe; and Anti-Bullying Week, where we focus on being kind, caring, and including everyone.
F2 Autumn 1 2025
This half term we have enjoyed reading a range of fiction and non-fiction texts linked to our topic ‘Our Community’. We have learnt all about the people who help us at home, at school, and in our wider community. A highlight of the term was our Police Officer visit, where we discovered more about their important role and how they help to keep people safe.
We have also celebrated who we are and what makes us special and unique, using the books Super Duper You and What Makes Me a Me? to inspire our discussions and artwork.
As writers, we have been strengthening our hand muscles through lots of fun fine-motor activities. We have used tweezers, scissors, and pegs to explore different media and materials, developing control and coordination. We have also been working hard on our letter formation—holding our pencils correctly and starting and finishing each letter in the right place. In phonics, we have learnt all of the Phase 2 phonemes and have been practising our blending and segmenting skills when reading and writing CVC words and simple sentences.
As mathematicians, we have explored early mathematical concepts through the NCETM mastery approach, developing a deep understanding and secure number sense. We have learnt to recognise, count, and represent numbers to five, understanding that numbers tell us how many objects are in a set. Using practical activities and manipulatives, the children have compared groups to identify more, fewer, or the same, and have begun to subitise small quantities without counting. We have also explored simple patterns, shapes, and spatial awareness through play and discussion, building mathematical vocabulary and reasoning skills to explain our thinking.
As artists, we have experimented with a range of techniques, tools, and materials. Each child has carefully observed their features to create a beautiful self-portrait for our class display. We then drew our family members and enjoyed talking about how every family is unique. As the seasons changed, we practised our observational drawing skills by creating Autumn pumpkin pictures and making leaf characters using leaves collected on our Autumn Walk.
The children have also had plenty of opportunities to develop their imagination through role play. Our home corner has been very popular, with children collaborating and drawing on familiar experiences from home. Everyone is now excited to explore our new Café role-play area this term!
As explorers, we have learnt all about the season of Autumn. The children loved our Autumn Walk around the school grounds, collecting conkers and colourful leaves to explore further in the classroom. We also learnt about Diwali – the Festival of Light. The children made and decorated salt dough divas and discovered how Diwali is celebrated around the world.
As part of our Jigsaw lessons, our focus has been ‘Being Me in My World’. We have spent time talking about our families and created a family tree using photographs from home. Elephants and Tigers have prioritised settling in this half term, enjoying time to get to know each other, make new friends, learn class rules and routines, and explore their feelings together.
Summer 2025
Spring 2025
Spring 1 Overview
As readers, we have enjoyed a variety of fiction and non-fiction books about the heroes and helpers in our community. We have had a visit from a team of fire fighters who showed us around their fire engine and taught us all about fire safety in the home.
As writers, we have continued to gain confidence when creating stories, lists and descriptions. We applied our phonic knowledge in many ways including labelling our own super heroes and writing reports about a police incident in the classroom involving Humpty Dumpty. We have also begun to write our own sentences before register time. We use the grapheme of the day in our words and some of us have even started to use capital letters, full stops and finger spaces! Amazing!
We have enjoyed our maths mastery work this term and have continued to improve our number sense with numbers to 10. We are getting better at counting forwards and back, partitioning, ordering and adding and subtracting. We have enjoyed all the opportunities to experiment with maths in our learning environment including working with pattern, shape and measures.
As artists, we have experimented with a variety of different skills using watercolours, collage, chalk and junk modelling materials. We used the bottom of a coke bottle to print beautiful blossom trees linked to our Chinese New Year learning and have created a city skyscape by layering different materials for our Superhero characters.
As explorers, we have learnt about different people who help us in our community. We have taken our learning outside to discover the signs of winter and have enjoyed cracking and exploring ice and snow. We discovered new flavours when we tasted food from China, watched how our Amaryllis plant changed over time and have continued to care for our class guinea pig, Nutmeg.
We have been fully involved in our PE sessions this term and have thoroughly enjoyed having Charlie from Notts County Football Club teaching us. We have learnt new games, practised our ball skills and developed our control and co-ordination when travelling with the ball.
In our Jigsaw lessons we have focussed on our dreams and goals and are beginning to recognise the feelings we have when we find things difficult.
Spring 2 Overview
This half term we have enjoyed reading a range of fiction and non-fiction texts linked to our ‘Adventure and Journeys’ topic. To celebrate World Book Day, Tigers and Elephants dressed up as our favourite book characters and had lots of fun sharing our favourite stories and characters with our friends.
As writers, we have continued to apply our phonic skills when writing for different purposes. We have used descriptive vocabulary to create wanted pirate posters and enjoyed teaching phonics in our role-play school! We have also been writing daily sentences using words containing digraphs. The children are beginning to use capital letters, fingers spaces and full stops more confidently in their writing! Amazing!
As part of our maths mastery curriculum, we have explored the composition of teen numbers using objects, tens frames and partitioning. We have also explored the relationship between 1 more and 1 less as well as number bonds to 5 and 10. Whilst learning about the properties of 3d shapes the children loved becoming shape detectives and searching for shapes in their classrooms and outdoors!
As artists, we have used a range of different techniques and experimented with different tools and materials in our work. We have practised our observational drawing skills when creating Spring daffodil pictures, created representations of planet earth using collage materials and created 3d rockets and dinosaurs in our making area. We have also enjoyed designing and making different crafts for our Mother’s Day Breakfast, Easter and Autism Awareness Week.
The children have had lots of opportunities to develop their imagination through role-play this term. There have been exciting scenarios acted out in our role-play school and mud kitchen café. Everybody also had a brilliant time on our Tiny Town Adventures trip, where the children got to develop their creativity and express themselves. They had the chance to dress up and become firefighters, hairdressers, vets, builders and really brought the town alive!
As scientists we have enjoyed learning all about the planets in our solar system, created treasure maps and made our very own dinosaur fossils using salt dough. We have also started to talk about Spring and the changes that happen in our environment at this time of year.
In P.E. we have been focussing on our team work skills. We have played lots of games and enjoyed working together to achieve a goal. As part of this we have developed our listening and communication skills as well as our control and co-ordination when travelling in different ways and using the equipment.
As part of our Jigsaw lessons, we have learnt all about different ways to keep healthy. We have sorted healthy and unhealthy foods and talked about the importance of sleep, exercise and keeping clean.
Autumn 2024
Throughout the Autumn term the children have loved learning about our topics of ‘Ourselves’ and ‘Animals.’
As writers, we have been working hard on developing our segmenting skills. We have enjoyed drawing and labelling who lives in our house, writing captions as to where the skeletons were hiding, writing about our dream pet and making a list for Santa. We have also been busy writing for lots of different purposes in the environment, in particular shopping lists, appointment cards in the vets and labelling our fantastic models!
As readers, we have been reading the fiction books; In Every House on Every Street, Monkey Puzzle, Funnybones, I want a Pet, The Three Little Pigs and The Gruffalo which have been used as the basis for our learning. As well as these, we have read a range of non-fiction texts linked to Diwali and Christmas and explored them in shared reading. We have been developing our early reading skills in guided reading where we have used our phonic knowledge to sound and blend unknown words, have practised reading ‘tricky’ words and have worked on our tracking as we read skills.
As part of our transition into school we have spent a lot of time developing our listening, attention and social skills. We have met Jigsaw Jenie and Paws who have helped us to discuss and learn about being a member of the Elephant and Tiger family and the importance of working together, helping each other and being kind.
