‘Castles, Knights, Kings and Queens’

This term the learning in EYFS allows the children to look back at the past in our topic ‘Knights, Castles, Kings and Queens’.  The children will have the opportunity to explore similarities and differences between the past and present and can use their first hand experiences and existing knowledge to contribute to our valued class discussions.  Learning will be relevant and local to our children as we open the terms’ learning by exploring the significance of the castles associated with our class names; Leeds and Dover.

We have a broad and wonderful array of cores texts through which we will be learning all about castles, why they were built and what type of people lived in them.  These texts are engaging and offer a good balance of fiction versus non-fiction.

Communication and Language the children will be invited to share their experiences of castles alongside their existing knowledge of knights, kings and queens. 

Children will continue to partake in a daily phonics session these include practising the skills of word building, reading everyday words, writing dictations and engaging in sound swapping, the beginning of phoneme manipulation.  Children also have the opportunity to practise these skills in their ‘own learning’.   

In Literacy children are now deeply engaged in lessons and this term we will be writing instructions, creating information books and storyboards.

In Mathematics we are moving towards numbers to 10 and developing automaticity of composition of numbers to 10 so that children can recall number bond facts.

In Expressive Art and Design the children will be exploring a range of materials and using these to create castles, crowns and shields.  The children will also be learning the skill of printing, using an array of materials to create printed works of art. 

In Physical Development we will be practising our gross and fine motor skills through daily ‘clever fingers’ activities and weekly physical education lessons.  Our focus in PE lessons this term is dance.  The children will be exploring how to use parts of their bodies and how to keep and move to a beat. The children will be taking part in games to support them to lead and follow a range of dance movements.

In Personal Social and Emotional Development children will be looking at the role of royalty in the past compared to now and their understanding of the roles and duties of knights, kings and queens will be explored.  This term, using our core texts the children will be encouraged to challenge stereotypes and to explore the concept of ‘role models’.    

In Understanding the World the children will explore what a castle is, their key features, how they were built and for whom.  The children will learn significant facts about their class castles, who lived in them and why they were built.  We will explore important castles from different countries and consider similarities and differences to castles located in England.  We will explore the roles and duties of people who lived in proximity of castles blacksmiths, bakers, treasurers.  The children will learn the duties of a knight and those of a princess and we will look specifically at Joan of Arc and her importance as a female knight and the importance of her role in challenging stereotypes.