Summer Term 1 2026

Week 1 & 2

This fortnight, we have been thoroughly enjoyed learning about the park and all of it’s joys! We loved exploring the different equipment you might find in a park and used stories such as ‘At the park’ and ‘Potatoes at the park’ to give us some more insight into what we would expect.

In bucket time recently, we enjoyed simulating our trip to the park where we used the slide to practice climbing up safely and coming down, spinning on the spinner and swinging small world toys on the swing!

Our oracy core word focus has been ‘when’ where we used pom poms and dropped them from height onto a tray asking ‘when will they fall…?’.

We have had Miss Cheryl in to support our music and movement for the past 2 weeks and we have had the best time dancing and singing 😊.

Our sensory story this fortnight was all about walking to the park. We explored what we might hear, feel, see and do.

Phonics this fortnight has been all about ‘bird’ and ‘book’. We loved listening to bird songs and singing songs about birds. We also enjoyed lots of books all alongside our usual phonics activities including playdough stamp, whiteboard write, finding magnetic letters and ‘same, same’ matching small cards.

Week 3

This week, we have been learning about what animals you might find at the park. We had great fun singing ‘Have you heard about Hugh’ and then had a special visitor – Mr Prickles – who had a little play in his play pen whilst we watched. Some of us even got to feel his spiky quills!

In bucket time, we enjoyed our stage 2 activity – At the park, not at the park – where we had to decide which animal you might find at the zoo or the park. We also enjoyed making animal movements like crawling like a hedgehog, jumping like a rabbit and climbing like a squirrel.

Our oracy core word focus was ‘get’. We thought it was very funny when some of our favourite toys were buried in shaving foam and being asked to ‘get it out’ pulling them out one by one. We then all had a turn at launching our spinning toy into the air and being asked to ‘go and get it’!

Our sensory story this week was ‘animals at the park’ where we enjoyed learning about ducks in the pond, hedgehogs in the bushes, dogs running past, a cat on a bench, rabbits in the grass and squirrels in the trees. We used our senses to help explore all of these concepts.

Phonics this week has been all about ‘bark’ where we looked at both meanings of bark – bark you might find at the park and the sound of a dog! We enjoyed singing ‘how much is that doggy in the window’ anticipating when to bark out loud. We also were able to feel the cold damp bark from outside and spelling out our word of the week. Alongside this, we did our usual phonics activities including playdough stamp, whiteboard write, finding magnetic letters and ‘same, same’ matching small cards.

Week 4 & 5

This fortnight, we have been exploring local walks in our area and what we might see and do. We had great fun going on our walks this term and finally managed to get to feed the ducks and visit the library. We brought some frozen peas and sweetcorn and stood on the bridge near the Hub to feed all of the birds. Our trip to the library was really successful too where we had to practice safe crossing of the busy road and then choosing books to borrow with our special new library card.

In bucket time, we really enjoyed going shopping for Nia’s special list. We had to choose an item from the shopping list and then find the matching item to add to our basket. Once we found the object, we were able to scan and pay for the item. We also loved our road safety bucket where we played an I Spy game and then matched the red, amber and green lights saying ‘stop’, ‘wait’ and ‘go’.

Our oracy core word focus in week 4 was ‘put’ where the children were asked to roll a ball into the box making sure to aim and roll hard enough to make it into the box. We then had a turn at throwing the ball into the box. In week 5, our oracy core word was ‘some’. We had great fun blowing ‘some bubbles’ and then popping them but our favourite activity was with Shelly the puppet who wanted ‘some’ shapes. We had to decide what shape to give Shelly and sang along with the song!

Phonics this week has been all about ‘beep’ where we had to use our bus tickets to get on the ‘bus’ and then sang Wheels on the bus and beep, beep, beeped! Alongside this, we did our usual phonics activities including playdough stamp, whiteboard write, finding magnetic letters and ‘same, same’ matching small cards.

We have had a great term with lots of beautiful attention and listening progress and now look forward to a nice week of sunshine and rest, ready for the big summer term. Enjoy your bank holiday and May half term week 😊