Teaching & Learning Weekly Summary
Below you will find our weekly teaching and learning summary to find out how we develop and enrich your child's teaching and learning whilst they are with us.
If you would like to keep up with what your child is doing in class, please follow our EYFS instagram account where we share lots of photos of our day to day learning @darley_dene_eyfs.
| Week ending | What we have been learning about |
|---|---|
| 14/2/25 | What a great week we have had celebrating Valentines. The children practised writing out the tricky word 'you' so they wrote a lovely message in their Valentine's cards. The children enjoyed reading the story of Digi Duck to celebrate Safer internet day, and we discussed how we can be safe online. In our P.E. lesson we practised hopping, skipping and jumping and learnt the difference between frog, bunny and kangaroo jumps. The children enjoyed learning to play a board game based on our trick words and used their subitising skills to count the number of moves from the dice. We made a love potion in the water tray and practised our capacity vocabulary when pouring the pink potion into different containers. Have a wonderful half term! |
| 7/2/25 | What a fantastic week we have had celebrating Maths week at Darley Dene. The children enjoyed the tagtiv8 session led by year 6 children, in which they had to find certain number tags while working in a team. We wrote a number story based on the 'five little ducks' rhyming story and discussed what the minus symbol means. The children loved logging in on numbots and creating their own robots to build as they progressed onto the next maths challenges on the app. Additionally, they got to make their own robots enhancing their fine motor skills through cutting robot parts. We have grown our knowledge in 6,7 and 8 and learnt what it means to have an odd and even number. We look forward to seeing you next week in the last week before half term! |
| 31/01/25 | This week we have been celebrating Chinese New Year! We learnt the story of how the animals were chosen for the year by the Jade Emperor who made the animals race. We explored the different types of food people eat on Chinese New Year and had a chance to make some in our Chinese takeaway role play area. Addittionally we had a chance to make some vegetable spring rolls for our cooking this term and thought of all the 'doing' words we use when we cook. The children enjoyed making paper lanterns, a dragon and a snake puppet as it is the Year of the snake. They enjoyed the festivities so much! |
| 24/01/25 | We have had another brilliant week learning about people who help us in the community. The children could name so many real life superheroes of people who help keep us safe, make us feel better and help us to learn. We even had a special visit from Surrey Police, who shared with us how they help keep the public safe. The children got a chance to try on police uniforms and explore the police vehicle too! It was so wonderful getting to know what the children would like to be when they are older, from princesses to dentists. The children enjoyed learning about different job roles too. In maths, we were comparing the capacity of different objects and liquids and the children had so much fun using the water equipment to balance and tip the scales. Have a wonderful weekend! |
| 17/01/25 | This week we have been reading 'A Super Family like Ours' and thought about the types of superpowers we would like to have. The children thought of some wonderful powers and what they would do with them. We then used these ideas to write a full sentence using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces! I am so impressed with their hard work in their writing. We discussed our dreams and goals in PSHE and the children shared what they want to become when they are older. They have had a wonderful time in the dentist role play area and having conversations about brushing their teeth and keeping clean. Have a wonderful weekend! |
| 10/01/25 | Happy New Year everyone! It has been a lovely week learning about Superheroes as we read our new power of reading text 'Max the Brave'. We have been exploring what it means to be a superhero and what qualities one might have to be one. The children could name so many superheroes that they know and described what superpowers they would like too. We have also been learning about seasons in science and described what makes winter wintry! The children have been looking back on their Phase 2 sounds in phonics and working hard to practice their decodable words. In P.E. we have been learning how to control a ball by rolling it and practising bouncing a ball. We will see you next week Reception! |
| 20/12/24 | This week we have been making our christmas wish lists, and practising our letter formations. We have also looked at new years eve, and practised counting backwards from 10. The children had so much fun celebrating christmas with our Christmas lunch on Wednesday. We hope you have a wonderful christmas break, and a restful start to 2025! Happy Christmas Everyone! |
| 13/12/24 | Reception had another fantastic week learning about Christmas. We thought of decorations we could put on our own Christmas tree and the children had some incredible ideas that they wrote down. They have been enjoying our new role-play area 'The Christmas Post Office' and we packed some presents to put underneath our class Christmas tree. Our power of reading text this week is the 'Tree that was meant to be' and we explored the journey the tree went on and how the animals cared for the tree. On Monday we had a lovely treat watching 'Jack and the Beanstalk' Pantomime and had lots of giggles and laughs, listening to the story. We are looking forward to seeing you next week in the final week of school! |
| 06/12/24 | We are all so proud of the children's singing, enthusiasm and passion in their nativity play. All the children were moved up to bronze for their hard work. This week we have been celebrating Christmas and introduced the children to our new role-play area - Christmas Post office. They have been writing letters, posting notes and Christmas cards to post in our postboxes. I was so impressed with the children's knowledge of Christmas in our writing lessons and the keywords they learnt to sound out and spell. We will see you all next week! |
| 29/11/24 | This week we have been celebrating birthdays and planned a surprise birthday party for one of our teddies in the classroom. The children enjoyed writing invitations to Bunny's birthday party and practised writing the tricky word 'To' in our invite. We planned a list of activities we would like to do on Friday for the party and enjoyed practising turn taking in pass the parcel. The children are so excited to share their singing for the nativity next week. Have a wonderful weekend! |
| 22/11/24 | This week Reception have been learning about Hanukkah for this week's celebration. We learnt of the Jewish story of the menorah lamp and counted 9 candles all together. We learnt about what people eat and play during Hanukkah. I am so impressed with the children's phonics as we have been learning a new diagraph everyday this week 'sh', 'ch', 'ng' and 'nk'. The children enjoyed weighing objects on our scales and seeing which one was heavier or lighter. The children have been working so hard on the nativity production and we can't wait to show you. Have a good weekend! |
| 15/11/24 | What a brilliant week we've had celebrating Diwali. We had a wonderful Diwali workshop where the children danced with scarfs and read some Hindi stories to deepen their knowledge of Diwali. In maths, we looked at circles and triangles and enjoyed making our own Rangoli patterns from these shapes. It was so lovely to see so many of our families come and visit the children for 'Stay and Play' where they shared their learning this week on Little Glow. We also spoke about how we can respect each other in the playground as it was anti-bullying week and thought of ways we could use kind hands and kind words to our friends. Have a phenomenal weekend! |
| 08/11/24 | What a brilliant first week back Reception! We have started our new topic of 'Celebrations and Festivities' and we started exploring bonfire night. The children enjoyed making firework pictures using their fine motor skills to stamp colours and pinch glitter to give it a shine. In our new power of reading text 'Little Glow' we looked at the different celebrations and focused on what happened at a birthday. The children then wrote their own party shopping list of what they would like at their own birthday party. The children enjoyed exploring the new role-play area of a Cafe. The children took orders, served food and ran their busy café, including a special menu item of toast and jam! We will see you all next week. |
| 25/10/24 | Reception had a brilliant week exploring the theme of Halloween. The spiderweb's fine motor skills activity was a hit in reception as the children worked hard to pinch the spiders and eyeballs from the tough tray web. The children enjoyed exploring the inside of a pumpkin as they practised scooping out the insides and counting the seeds. We had a wonderful time creating potions in writing and included some creative items in our couldron such as slime, bones, spider legs and eyeballs. We are so amazed at the children's subsidising skills as they learnt how to recognise 4 and 5 this week in different ways. Reception also enjoyed making Halloween cookies and icing them to develop their fine motor skills and spark creativity. Have a fantastic half-term and we will see you soon! |
| 18/10/24 | This week we have been celebrating Black History Month! We looked back at our power of reading the text "Hair Love" and discussed what products people use in their hair and why doing our hair makes us feel special. We also explored different afro hairstyles and used braids and pom poms to create these hairstyles in the artistic style of Tyler Clark. The children have been learning about circles and triangles and went on a shape hunt to try and identify these two shapes in our school. They also made their own ankara prints using triangles and circles in a pattern. The children loved creating sunset silhouettes of animals on a safari. Have a great weekend! |
| 11/10/24 | This week we have been celebrating Harvester and all things 'kindness'. In writing, we have been exploring our power of reading text 'We All Belong' and have been discussing what makes us different. We have linked the theme of inclusivity from the book with our school values and have identified how we belong in our classroom and school community. The children did a fantastic job at subsitising 1, 2 and 3 this week. We have started partitioning the numbers too. To deepen our learning, we also made the number block 1, 2 and 3! The children loved going on a 'B' hunt around the classroom to practise their letter formation of B. Have a wonderful weekend! |
| 04/10/24 | Reception have had a super week reading our new book 'Hair Love'. They wrote some wonderful sentences about their hair and what it looks like. We had a fun time learning about other hairstyles and having a discussion about what we love about our own hair. In maths, we looked at creating our own pattern with shapes, colour and sounds too. The children also explored what heavy and light means in maths, and we weighed objects using the scales. Reception had a wonderful time creating faces using natural resources such as pine cones, conkers and sticks. We wish you a wonderful weekend! |
| 27/09/24 | This we have been reading our new power of reading text 'We all belong'. We had a discussion about what makes us the same and what makes us different. We learnt that the children in our class speak many different languages at home and eat different types of food too. In maths, we have been making rules in sorting and matching and looking at the 'odd one out' of a set. The children used their maths eyes to make observations of different buttons and sorted them in different ways. For example by colour, shape, number of holes and size. It has been so wonderful to see the children making their own houses using the lollipop sticks in the art area. They also used their matching skills to create faces, matching the correct eyes, ears, nose and mouths. We can't wait to see you all next week. Have a great weekend! |
| 20/09/24 | The children have had a wonderful time learning new sounds 'i', 'n', 'm' and 'd'. Keep practising your segmenting and blending skills with words that start with these at home! The children were introduced to our power of reading text, The Colour Monster. They met lots of different monsters, such as the confused, happy, sad and angry monster. We discussed what makes us feel these different emotions and the children had a chance to write down what makes them feel happy in writing lessons. In maths, we have been continuing to look at matching and sorting and used our maths eyes to sort objects in only two groups, for example buttons with 2 holes and buttons that don't have 2 holes. It was wonderful to see the children use the small world area to create their own homes and describe where they live. We are looking forward for a super week next week! |
| 13/09/24 | Reception class has had a terrific week learning about our classroom and playground environment as they begin to settle into day to day routines. We have been practising greetings throughout the day and how to introduce ourselves to our peers by saying our names. The children have loved 'dough disco' on the carpet as they begin to strengthen their fine motor skills and sing rhymes and songs aloud. In maths, we have been making patterns with bears, beads and blocks. Our phonics have started really well, and we have learnt 4 new sounds, 'S, A, T and P' and learnt keywords that begin with our sounds. The hospital dress up area has been so popular and it has been a joy seeing children act in roles as doctors, vets and nurses while treating their patients. Next week we will start our power of reading text 'The colour monster' and we have already been introduced to some of the characters in the book. Have a wonderful weekend and we will all see you next week! |
| 06/09/24 | It has been so wonderful having our Reception children at school this week, where they have been meeting new friends and learning new routines. Over the last few days, we have been learning about our classroom environment and different resources we can use in our play. We are so proud of all the children and look forward to seeing you on Monday. |
