Badgers

Welcome to Badgers!

Badgers class

Badgers class is Woodlands schools’ busy Early Years Foundation Stage class. We welcome pupils between the ages of 2-5years old for both reception and nursery placements. Children attend both full time and/or 15 hours dependant on their age.

Badgers class is a fun place to learn through play, we have a busy topic led curriculum and enjoy accessing a wide range of activities throughout our school week.

Our EYFS follows the seven areas of learning. Each child has their own EYFS targets alongside their IEP education goals. Children are assessed throughout their time in Badgers to see what they enjoy doing and how they access these different activities. We use Tapestry to send pictures of learning home for parents to see. We take many pictures to share with parents to show what the children have been up to!

We will now discuss each area of the Early Years and give examples of the fun activities you will find happening within our classroom.

Literacy

Daily literacy sessions combine our topic based story and our schools Balanced Literacy approach for teaching Literacy. Each day we explore different letters, enjoy mark making, learning our letter of the day and sharing stories with one another.

The children love looking at photographs provided by parents each week. Our news, show and tell sessions allow us to develop communication and social interactions between the children in Badgers.

Maths

We learn a range of mathematical concepts through story and play. You will find our continuous provision is set up to allow children to access a range of free flow activities both with and without adult support. Our maths table is a highlight and children often enjoy exploring colours and shape through games and iPad apps. We also have our variety of maths activities outside including our sand and water tables to work on early maths skills and develop play.

We enjoy our weekly number song sessions alongside our colour and shape individual learning activities.

Understanding the world

We develop our understanding of the world through our topic-based learning. As discussed on our schemes of work available on the website, each term new topic is explored through play. We will access activities through stories, art and our outside learning. We also have a weekly topic related to our story and explore topic related learning in our continuous provision area.

We also enjoy sharing topic themed days with Key Stage 1 throughout the term.

Expressive arts and design

We love arts and crafts. We are a very messy class who enjoy a range of messy play activities. Each week we have lots of painting, colouring and messy play linked to our topic of the term. We also love exploring music in our morning music sessions and decorating our classroom with all of our wonderful artwork. We enjoy fortnightly cooking sessions, dancing and being as creative as possible.

Physical development

Each week we enjoy our swimming sessions in the pool. We enjoy being with our friends, signing songs and developing our confidence and play in the water. We love all of the new sensory lights too!

We access sensory circuits each morning, for those who require them, and also enjoy using the soft play area once a week to work on our gross motor skills.

Badgers love being outside in the garden! We particularly enjoy the bikes, slides and climbing apparatus. Similarly, we enjoy being with our friends sharing a ball and playing in the Wendy house.

Personal social emotional development.

In Badgers class, we are learning to spend time alongside our peers and work together. We enjoy our group communication sessions, shared story time and group games each week. We love sharing instruments during our morning music class and will spend time together when outside playing. We encourage all of the children to be aware of those around them and to develop these skills throughout play. All of our learning encourages children to work together and wait their turn, share their activity and develop their communication.

Each term we host a family party. We love welcoming all of the children and parents into class to access activities together, socialise and get to know one another. Our therapists, class team, parent support advisor and leadership team often visit to discuss and chat with the families. We spend time outside, accessing toys, arts and crafts and even have squash and biscuits!

Our class friend:

Each week Billy the Badger will take a trip to a new friend’s house. We encourage all parents and children to get involved and provide us with some news to share during our communication sessions each Monday morning. We love sharing the stories of Billy and his friend and always wonder where he will visit each week?

We hope you have enjoyed learning about our EYFS class here at Woodlands school, often we are so busy we need an afternoon nap!

Please come and visit us anytime!