Hello and welcome to EYFS (Reception) at Bollinbrook, and we are glad that you have chosen Bollinbrook for your child’s learning journey with us. In EYFS the teachers are Mrs Chadwick (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) and Mrs Wilde (Thursday and Friday). We also have full time Teaching Assistant support with either Mrs Burns or Miss Nikki.

When the children come in each morning they need to hang up their coats, put their water bottle on the snack table and then put away their book bag. They can then find their photograph and stick it onto our ‘ten-frame’ on the wall as a way of self-registration.

In Early Years we access both the outdoor and indoor classrooms after we have registered and had our phonics session. Please see the timetable document for more detail on a day in the life of Early Years. We will go outside whatever the weather so we ask that your child has a coat every day and in the winter they also bring a hat and gloves.

Each day we will work with the children to work on their fine and gross motor skills which will help them to write later down the line. We use two very fun ways of doing this, ‘Squiggle While you Wiggle’ and ‘Dough disco’.  For Squiggle while you wiggle each child has two squares of fabric called ‘Flappers’ (they will keep theirs in their tray and we will wash them frequently) and we ‘flap’ them making large movements. This will help strengthen their arms and shoulders. Watch this video for more detail. Dough disco is a method of developing fine motor control using a small pot of playdough and exercising the children’s fingers to develop muscle strength. Watch this video for more detail.

Each day the children will be offered a piece of free fruit for their snack. The children are able to bring in a healthy snack from home, please do not send in biscuits, chocolate or crisps and please avoid snacks that contain nuts.

Usually at Bollinbrook we ‘buddy up’ the EYFS children with the Y6, a child who they will spend time with each week, often reading together, doing activities together and when we go to church they walk there together. Due to Covid and the restrictions in place with the bubbles this is not going to happen in person just yet but we are looking at how we can best introduce the buddy system in a virtual way.

In Autumn term we would also normally host a Phonics Workshop for parents, where we would invite you in for a presentation about how we teach reading at Bollinbrook, followed by showing you games and resources that you can play at home to help your child learn letter sounds and how to read. Again, due to Covid restrictions this will not take place in school and we are looking at how best to present this event. Further information will come out via Arbor once we have finalised arrangements.

In EYFS (and Key Stage 1) we use Tapestry to record learning and share what your child has been doing at school. You will receive notifications when observations have been added and you will be able to comment on these. Home learning tasks will be set each week via Tapestry for your child to complete at home. We also encourage parents to upload their own ‘observations’ on to their child’s account, sharing special interests, achievements or moments, i.e. learning to ride their bike, collecting conkers and autumnal leaves, counting to a bigger number than they have before. You are able to upload photographs and videos to your observation. These are often a great conversation starting opportunity for the children to share special moments with the class and the children love seeing themselves on the large Interaction TV! For support with using Tapestry please take a look at this link.

Two of the home learning elements include handwriting and reading. For handwriting we use a scheme called LetterJoin which has a facility to log in at home and practice on a computer, laptop or tablet. We will send home log-in details shortly. For reading not only do we have a wide selection of high-quality paper books but we also have a subscription to an e-book system, called Bug Club,  which the children will all get a log-in to. They will be able to read and listen to stories at home, which are closely linked to their phonics understanding, and details for this will follow once we have completed all of our baseline assessments.