YearR-20252026

We hope that you have all enjoyed a fun, yet restful Half Term. We are looking forward to a fun week when we return, learning about Bonfire Night and meeting with our Year 6 buddies again for some firework craft!

We enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you before Half Term to share and celebrate your child’s successes since starting school. Please can we remind you to add a comment to the Tapestry post we sent out before your parents evening meeting, titled ‘My first half term at school’. It’s lovely to hear your views on your child’s achievements so far.

The children have all done amazingly well and we hope they are recharged after the holiday ready to begin our next topic ‘Terrific Tales.’ You can find the Newsletter for this Half Term here. As always, please do speak to us if you have a question.

Thank you for the support you have been giving your child to complete their 3 ‘Agents of Change’ half termly challenges. We will now move onto the 3 challenges we have set for this new half term. As per the card you have at home, these are:

Please can we remind you that the school’s weekly newsletter published every Friday contains information relevant to the whole school, including Year R. For some school-wide events, the information is emailed out directly to you.  Although we do communicate directly with you via Tapestry for Year R specific events (e.g. Autumn Walk), we do not duplicate information published on the school newsletter or emailed out directly to you. Please do ensure you are reading the school’s newsletter thoroughly each week to ensure you don’t miss out on an event, and making a note of events sent out via email from the school office.

The next school-wide events coming up are the Scholastic book fair this week, and ‘Odd Socks Day’ during Anti-Bullying week which is next week. Check your emails from the school office, and take a look at the newsletter to find out more.

Thank you for your continued support,

The Year R Team.

We have all thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and your children properly over the last week and beginning to get to know you. We really appreciate you giving us such a warm welcome into your homes, so thank you from us all in Year R.

The children were all amazing as they came into school today; they showed such resilience and risk taking in the face of their new adventure and lots of curiosity as they met new classmates and explored their new classrooms and outside learning areas. There were lots of smiling faces as they left to greet you at the end of their sessions which was wonderful to see.

As we explained on our home visits we will post a half termly newsletter during the first week of each half term. These newsletters will give you an overview of what we will be teaching your child during the half term so you can support them with their learning at home.

This term we will spend the first few weeks focussing on settling the children into school before beginning our Phonics and Maths teaching.

During this period we will be:

• building supportive and trusting relationships with your child.
• supporting your child to form new relationships with their classmates.
• building up our daily routines gradually to ensure they are embedded and understood.
• building your child’s independence in completing daily routines.
• introducing new areas of the school gradually so all the children feel safe and secure.
• playing games and completing activities with the children to find out more about their individual starting points before their learning journey with us begins.

You can click on the link below to read this term’s newsletter.

Year R newsletter Autumn 1 2025

Please can we remind you that we are holding an online meeting tomorrow Wednesday 10th September at 6pm on Zoom. During this meeting we’ll give you information about how we teach Phonics, Reading, Writing and Maths in Year R and you’ll hopefully find it useful so you can support your child’s learning at home. The link for this meeting was sent out last week, and it was in last Friday’s newsletter sent from Mr Applegate.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

Mrs Baird, Mr Bonner and Mrs Rushton

What a fantastic day Sports Day was! We were all so proud of the Year R children for their team work, perseverance and resilience on their very first Sports Day. It was wonderful to end the term on such a high. Thank you for coming along to support your child and their colour teams, the atmosphere was amazing!

We are continuing on our hot air balloon adventure this term. We are going to land in Tanzania in the Serengeti National Park this week and we are going to remain here and travel further into Kenya next week, learning more about life in Africa and the similarities and differences between Africa and the UK.

We are looking forward to continuing on our journey around the world over the coming weeks and also look forward to other special events along the way; a mock wedding when we are learning about ‘Special Clothes’ in RE, our Celebration Day and a buddy picnic to finish off the term. Dates for the wedding and buddy picnic will be confirmed nearer the time.

You can find out more about our topic and other learning for this half term in our newsletter here.

Our Forest School sessions continue this term too, see a reminder of the dates in the newsletter above. Please can we remind you that the children must wear long sleeves and long trousers for their sessions, even if it’s a hot day.

If you haven’t already done so, please complete the permission form for Celebration Day and pay your £12 contribution via SCOPAY by Friday 20th June.  The office will be sending out an email and form soon about packed lunches for this day. You will have the option of sending one from home, or ordering one from Pabulum our catering company.

During this term we will also be preparing the children for the changes which will come in September when they move up to Year 1. Please be assured that we will approach the move up to Year 1 very carefully and ensure that all the children are prepared as best as we can. We will be arranging story swaps with the Year 1 staff nearer the end of term, and they will visit the classrooms for some of these too. We will let you know via the Walk and Talk board when these have happened so you can follow it up at home that day.

Please can we remind you to complete this form asap to help inform our class decisions for September. The deadline is tomorrow, Monday 2nd June. Any responses after this may not be taken into consideration.

The Year R team

We hope that you have all had a good break and the children enjoyed lots of Easter fun! We certainly enjoyed our Easter themed learning just before the holidays and it was especially lovely to see our Year R children spending time with their Year 6 buddies at the Easter event. We are looking forward to arranging other opportunities to meet with our buddies during the Summer term.

For the whole of the Summer term our topic is ‘What an adventure!’ After this first week when we are focussing on RE and the concept of ‘belonging’ we will begin our adventure with an imaginary hot air balloon ride. Once we are off in our balloons we will visit the UK and the Amazon this half term before continuing on to the African plains, the Great Barrier Reef and then up into outer space during the last half term.

You can find out more about our topic and other learning for this half term in our newsletter here.

We are excited to introduce Forest School to the children this half term, starting with Penguins on Tuesday 22nd April. Please read here for a reminder of the dates of your child’s class Forest School sessions throughout the term.

We are looking forward to travelling the world with your children! As always, information about what we have learned day by day will be shared on your child’s ‘walk and talk’ board.

The Year R team

The children so enjoyed our topic last term ‘People Who Help Us.’ The highlight was a visit from the police service; thank you to PCSO’s Emma and Dom for taking the time to visit us. Throughout the term the children demonstrated so much curiosity about each role and particularly enjoyed exploring their learning through role play. They were introduced to lots of new vocabularly and facts and we hope the children enjoyed sharing their learning with you at home.

Chinese New Year was another highlight last half term. The children were very enthused and had a wonderful time learning about this special Chinese celebration and taking part in our own parade complete with dragon dancing, singing and music making!

This half term our topic is ‘Spring to life!’ Please click here to read this term’s newsletter which briefly outlines the topic and explains a little about what we will be focussing on across the curriculum. As always, you can find more information about what we have been learning each day on Tapestry in our ‘Walk and Talk’ post.

At the end of this term the children will be meeting with their Year 6 buddies for an Easter event. More information about this will follow nearer the time.

A reminder that on Friday 7th March we will be celebrating World Book Day (please note this is a day after the official World Book Day). More information can be found about how we are celebrating as a school in our most recent newsletter.

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress at Parents Evening on Tuesday 4th or Wednesday 5th March. These appointments are aimed  solely at parents so we ask that you come without your children please. If  this isn’t possible and you need to bring your child, please bring something to keep them occupied while we speak to you separately. Thank you.

Finally, you will have seen in the last newsletter that we are in the process of making changes to some parts of our outdoor area, to enhance the provision the children have for their outdoor learning. Please could we ask you to take a look here to see if you have any items at home which you might be able to donate? If you can help, please either speak to your child’s class teacher or email us at yearr@stmarksce.org.uk.  Thank you.

We look forward to another exciting term with your children!

The Year R Team