Communication and Language We will be learning and retelling a range of Traditional Tales and Disney stories. We will use costumes, props, story telling stones, puppets and small world figures to help us to act out the narratives. We will be having lots of discussions about the stories we have read- Who are the main characters? Where is the story set? Is there always a happy ending? We will also begin to be aware of the way a Fairy tale story is structured. We will be learning lots of new vocabulary to help us to learn about our theme. When we learn about castles we will learn the technical names- e.g.. Portcullis. Understanding the World We will use the story of the Three Little Pigs to help us to learn about materials. We will have a go at building our own houses out of the different materials that the pigs use. We will look at where we live and compare our houses to the houses in the stories that we read about. We will look at Castles and learn new vocabulary to describe the different parts of the castle. After looking at Jack and the Beanstalk we will be looking at growing vegetables in our garden area. We will also talk about the different jobs and roles of people that lived in a castle and decide which role we would like to play in our role play. Physical Development We will be using large construction like the blocks, bricks, pipes, crates and drapes to make castles, towers and dungeons. We will also do this on a smaller scale to build the bridges etc., with construction materials like the wooden blocks, or the Duplo. We will be learning how to travel in different ways over apparatus. We will also be thinking carefully about how to put away equipment safely so that we learn to manage risks ourselves. We will be using the Finger Gym to continue to strengthen our fingers and hands for writing. We will have to thread the beads onto the Queens necklace, or see how many jewels we can pick up with tweezers. Literacy We will continue with Phase 3 Phonics where we will learn lots more digraphs, tricky words and how to read and write a simple sentence. In handwriting we will be working on writing our numbers 1-10, as well as learning to form the Phase 3 graphemes. We will be learning to write with Quills in our castle and encounter lots of different writing in the role play areas. E.g. Writing an invitation to the banquet, designing and writing a menu for the banquet. We will enjoy a performance by a theatre company of Robin Hood to help us learn about the story. We will be meeting a poet called Andy Tooze to introduce us to poetry and to inspire us. Our Topic We had a planning meeting with the children to find out what they wanted to learn about next. Lydia was really keen to learn about Frozen. As a class we decided that we needed to make our ‘theme’ a bit bigger. This is when Bertie had the idea that we could do a ‘Disney/Fairy tale’ theme. We all got very excited by this and talked about our favourite Fairy Tales or Disney films. We made a list- Robin Hood, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Three Little Pigs, Jungle Book, Rapunzel and so on. We think this is something both the girls and boys would enjoy. We are going to go on a journey through a Fairy tale pop-up book and visit lots of different well known Fairy tales. Every week we will learn a new Fairy tale story, meet the characters from this book and begin to change our classroom into a Fairy tale world- with a giant castle, a gingerbread house. If your child has any ideas at home or has anything that would help us to learn about our theme please bring those things in. Expressive Arts and Design We will be learning how to design a Gingerbread house and how to make a creation from a design using junk modelling. We will then learn how to adapt our work when we realise something cannot work. We will learn to talk about our abilities and how well we have done on something. We will learn how to do different styles of dancing. E.g. Ballroom dancing at a Fairy tale ball. We will use lots of different role play areas to act out the Fairy tale story we are learning that week. E.g. Rapunzel’s castle. We will learn to sing along to new songs from the Fairy tales we learn about. We will listen to medieval or royal music and have a go at composing our own music for a royal celebration. Maths We are going to begin learning about money and will open up our own Gingerbread sweet shop to help us with this. Jack and the Beanstalk will be great for helping us learn to measure as we can measure the beanstalk, or even the giants feet. We are going to learn the names of 3D shapes, learning about castles will help us to notice shapes more and we’ll be able to build castles and towers using the 3D shapes. We will start to look at time when learning about the Three Little Pigs, and we will play games like ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?? Personal, Social and Emotional Development We will use role play to meet the ‘baddy’ character from a Fairy tale and use drama techniques like ‘hot seating’ to find out if they realise they have upset someone. E.g. Do the Ugly Sisters know that they have been hurtful and unkind to Cinderella? We will use the story of Snow White and the 7 dwarves to help us learn about different emotions and what somebody looks like when they are feeling that emotion.