Welcome to Early Years
2020-2021
The staff in Early Years this year are Mrs. Elder, Mrs. Lonsdale and Mrs Black.
Our Early Years teacher is Mrs Elder. She is supported by Mrs Lonsdale and Mrs Black. At Etherley Lane, our Early Years classrooms are very busy places! There is always something interesting going on and each day brings new challenges and surprises. During the Reception year, children progress rapidly and they develop the skills that are essential for lifelong learning. The children work on both adult directed tasks and have lots of opportunities for child initiated learning in the different areas of the learning environment. We promote independence and resilience and our aim is to create a culture of tolerance towards each other whilst appreciating and celebrating each other’s similarities and differences.
Below you can find out a little bit more about the Early Years team.
Mrs Elder
Hi, I’m Mrs Elder! I am the EYFS teacher and Science Lead throughout school. I have worked as a teacher now for thirteen years and I have been in Reception at Etherley Lane Primary School for over eight years. I love working in Reception because it is lovely to see how much the children progress and how independent they become in such a short space of time. It is such a privilege to see the children’s faces light up when they learn something new and every day the children put a smile on my face.
Outside of school, I love spending time with my three children Will, Isla and Phoebe, and my husband. We like going for woodland walks near our home, trips to the cinema and we love day trips to the beach – obviously I have to have a cheeky ice-cream! I also love to read and listen to music.
Mrs Lonsdale
Hello, I’m Mrs Lonsdale. I have worked at Etherley Lane for many years across all key stages. I enjoy working in Reception and love seeing how much progress the children make so quickly throughout the year.
In my spare time I enjoy cooking and sewing and I like to go for walks. I also love to spend time with my grandson.
Mrs Black
Hello, I’m Mrs Black. I have worked at Etherley Lane for over twelve years across all the key stages. I have moved into Early Years this year and I am looking forward to working with the youngest children in our school and helping them to progress throughout the year.
In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my four daughters, taking them to football and watching films together. I also enjoy going for dog walks and spending relaxing weekends at my caravan.
If your child is self-isolating and needs to access their learning from home, please find below the links to their lessons this week. These lessons follow closely with what your child would be learning this week in class.
Hello everyone!!!!
Each week we will put any homework/activities to complete on Seesaw – feel free to send me photos, drawings and videos. Nobody needs to bring homework into school at the moment but we still love to see the work you are doing at home.
If you are at home self-isolating we will put links on below so you can do the activities that we would be doing in class together.
Any questions, please feel free to get in touch.
Mrs Elder, Mrs Lonsdale and Mrs Black. xxx
School Closure Reading and Phonics Support
Please click here to view our Reading and Phonics page, which will provide information and support on how you can help your child continue to practise their reading skills should you need to self-isolate.
Reading for Pleasure
The document below includes weblinks and QR codes which will take you to videos of popular stories being read out loud. You can listen to these as part of your home learning or enjoy them as bedtime stories!
Activities week commencing 10/05/21
Hello everyone!!!
Here are the home learning activities for this week. Please submit any work done via Seesaw. Please continue to practise phonics flashcards and reading books with children.
Click on the links to find the activities for the day.
If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Mrs Elder x
Monday
Maths – https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/first-then-now-week-2/
PDF-First-Then-Now-Wk-2-Session-1-Taking-Away-with-Pebbles
Literacy – Children are to complete a ditty a day.
UW – Today we are going to be learning about our town of Bishop Auckland.
Think about some of the places you know in Bishop Auckland. You can draw pictures and write some sentences to tell me about these.
Tuesday
Maths – https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/first-then-now-week-2/
PDF-First-Then-Now-Wk-2-Session-2-Taking-Away-1
Literacy – Children are to complete a ditty a day.
EAD – Today we are going to be doing some observational drawings. Find something you would like to have a go at drawing at home. We will be drawing different fruit at school.
Wednesday
Maths – https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/first-then-now-week-2/
PDF-First-Then-Now-Wk-2-Session-3-Taking-Away-2
Literacy
Thursday
Maths – https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/first-then-now-week-2/
PDF-First-Then-Now-Wk-2-Session-4-Taking-Away-Unknown-Then
PE
Follow the link for today’s session which is Cosmic Yoga…Star Wars!!!
Friday
Maths – https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/early-years/first-then-now-week-2/
PDF-First-Then-Now-Wk-2-Session-5-Pass-It-On-Game
Literacy
Art
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Painting Activity
2019-2020
Parent Information Sheets
Class 1 Autumn 2019 Newsletter
autumn 2018-2019 parent info sheet
spring 2018-19 parent info sheet
summer 2018-2019 parent info sheet
Click on the links below to find out more about the Early Years at Etherley Lane Primary School.
What have we been up to in Early Years?
Reception is a very busy place to be and everyday we learn lots of new things whilst having lots of fun! Come and have a look at some of the things we have been doing!
EXCITING NEWS FOR EVERYONE IN RECEPTION!!!!!
In February, Reception entered the ‘My First Riddle’ competition which is ran by Young Writers. I am so excited to tell you that they were so impressed with your children’s entries that they would like to publish every single one of them!!!!
I am so proud of all the children as they worked really hard on their entries and I think it’s amazing that they will all have a piece of published work at the ages of 4 and 5!!!!
Our Nativity – ‘Hey Ewe!’
Our Visit to St. Anne’s Church
Mrs K invited EYFS and Year 1 to St. Anne’s Church to learn about the Nativity and to take part in some Christmas crafts. We had such a lovely time and can’t wait for our next visit to the church.
Keeping fit is fun!!!
Every week we have PE in the hall where we follow the Fundamental Movement Program from the Movement Team and we also follow the ‘Sticky Kids’ program. However we also want to keep fit throughout the week and we know how exercise is important for our bodies, so Mrs Elder gives us some movement breaks where we can dance along to ‘Popsico’. The songs are really catchy and it is great fun.
Making scary (but yummy) crispy cakes .
Using some home appliances it part of our technology curriculum in Early Years. We used a microwave to make some scary crispy cakes. We followed the instructions carefully to melt the chocolate in the microwave. We then added the rice crispies and decorated with scary eyeballs and snakes. Once the cakes had set in the fridge, they were ready to eat. They were delicious.
What’s inside a pumpkin?
We spent this week exploring pumpkins. Mrs Elder showed us a range of different coloured pumpkins… they were different colours and different sizes. We also cut open a pumpkin to see what was inside. It was a very messy job and we couldn’t believe how many seeds there were!!! We scooped out the seeds and pulp (the stringy bits) and put them in food bags for us to look at later with magnifying glasses. Afterwards, we made some pumpkin soup which we then ate with our friends. When we did a class vote, half of us liked the pumpkin soup and half of us weren’t so keen. We also read lots of stories and looked at non-fiction texts related to pumpkins.
Adam and Eve
Mrs K came into school to talk to us about the story of Adam and Eve. Mrs K read us the bible story and we spent a bit of time discussing making good choices, even though sometimes this can be hard. We then made Adam and Eve gingerbread people which we decorated and we then added the snake from the story.
Curiosity Cube???
In our classroom, Mrs Elder has placed a curiosity cube. Every few weeks the objects inside the cube will change and we will be able to observe them and notice any patterns and changes throughout our school day.
As part of our science work, we observed the flowers to see if anything happened when they were placed in different coloured water. We made some fabulous predictions and it was really interesting to observe the flowers over a week to see the results.
We love hula-hooping!!!
We were lucky enough to take part in a Hoopstar session at school. It was great to learn new skills and we can’t wait to practise some more at playtimes.
Exploring our school grounds!!!
We loved exploring our new school and it’s spectacular grounds. We are lucky to have so much space around our school. We made some great observations about the world around us.
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- Every day, everyone learns!
Welcome to our new Reception Class!!!!
We say a massive welcome to our new Reception children. We look forward to having a year of laughter, learning, fun and adventure with them. What better way to get to know each other, than to share 5 things that are really special us.
Mud Kitchen Mayhem!!!
We had great fun in the mud kitchen making lots of lovely food and drink. There was chocolate fudge cake, cupcakes, soup, casserole and some yummy hot chocolate. Some of us even wrote some amazing recipes!!!
World Book Day
We had such a fun World Book Day in school! We dressed up in some fantastic costumes and we showed each other our favourite books. In the morning, we were able to choose a story we would like to hear and we worked with different teachers and children from different year groups to complete an activity based around the story. In the afternoon, we listened to stories based around food. We spent some time in Mrs Jeavons’ class where we read ‘Oliver’s Milkshake’ and made some yummy milkshakes. We also went to Mrs Elder’s class where we listened to ‘The tiger who came to tea’ and afterwards we ate a delicious afternoon tea of cakes and juice. Have a look at some of our fantastic photo
