This term our topic was ‘All about me!’ We explored our emotional and physical selves as well as our relationships, communities, and customs. We practice being more independent in several areas of our school life from daily self-care to classroom work and forest exploration. We also had many opportunities to express ourselves through different mediums, such as song, dance, art, verbal discussion, play and exploration.
EYFS Prime Areas:
Communication and Language
This term we worked on using words like “please” and “thank you” as well as using nice words to talk to others. We practice using our “indoor voices” during our time in the classroom and when inside the school but we were also able to be a bit louder and let our energy out while playing outdoors in the forest and in the school yard. The song “Open Shut Them” was a class favourite and it helped us practice many vocabulary words including “please” and “no thank you”.
We had circle time everyday, which helped us to practice how to listen attentively and to participate appropriately. We learned that when we all spoke at the same time nobody could be heard and that the best way to share our thoughts and feeling to the group was to take turns.
We learned more about ourselves by naming our body parts through songs such as “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes”, “The skeleton Dance”and “One little finger.”
During group discussions we also delved into the work of famous painters and looked at prominent self-portraits. We focused on Vincent Vang Gogh’s work and we learned new vocabulary through the investigation of these beautiful images of landscapes and people. During a one-on-one discussion we used Van Gogh’s painting called “First Steps” to practice using our words when explaining what we see in an image.
Physical Development
We practiced our gross motor skills in the forest by participating in many different games, like tag, hide-and-seek, “What time is it Mr. Wolf?”, green light, red light, and many more. We really loved balancing, running, throwing, catching, and kicking in obstacle courses like this one:
We practiced yoga sometimes which taught us more about movement and breath.
During our classroom activities we used our fine motor skills daily. We learned how to hold pencils and crayons properly, we practiced pinching, cutting, using classroom materials, fastening velcro snaps, buttoning and unbuttoning and zipping up and down.
We also had a lot of fun swimming class. We practiced jumping in the pool, we learned how to keep our head under water for 5 seconds and to we also learned a few different swimming styles (sometimes even without floaties!)
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
We used some of the Montessori inspired methods in the classroom to promote autonomy and independence. We choose work from the shelves, carried it with both hands, used it appropriately, completed the task, and placed it back in its place once finished.
We had opportunities to work appropriately independently as well as in groups everyday and we practice self care tasks such as dressing, using the toilet, washing hands.
Use learned that inside the school and classroom we use our “walking feet” but that when we are outdoors we can run and play!
Everyday we helped each other with domestic tasks, such as cleaning and tidying, preparing and distributing snack, etc
EYFS Specific Areas:
Literacy
This term we worked on recognising our own name and picking it our out of the bunch. We also sounded out each letter every time the teacher wrote our name down on our work.
Nursery rhymes helped us to learn about many different topics especially phonics. We used the Jolly Phonics songs as well as other phonics songs to help us remember the sounds for S, A, T, and P. We also started learning about the calendar by singing about “The days of the week” everyday.
Writing practice:
Mathematics
We worked on recognising and naming different shapes as well as numbers 1 to 5.
Understanding the world
We explored different cultures through art and other media. Fore example, we talked about “Día de los muertos” during Halloween week and that gave us an opportunity to explore Mexico and some of its cultural practices during this holiday.
We also often talked our own cultural background and we discussed which countries we all come from. During the last couple of weeks of the term we really focused o learning about France and its culture.
On our class trip to France Miniature we got to visit the French sites we ha learned about in class and we expanded our knowledge about France. Some of the highlights of our trip were digging for treasures, seeing the Eiffel tower, sliding down the “tobogan” with our teachers and even a cheeky visit to the water park at the end of our day.
Expressive arts and design
We explored famous self portraits by Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat , Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Marie-Antoinette’s favourite painter Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.
As we learned about what it meant to make a self portrait, we created a cartoon version of ourselves and painted our uniforms with yellow and grey paint.
