Our Topic for the Spring term is entitled ‘Where we live’.  This unit develops children’s knowledge about the world, starting with their immediate environment and building on their immediate first hand knowledge. Children will explore their local environment using first hand observation and experience to enhance their awareness of the school within our local community.

We will be covering the following skills and range of experiences:

•   understanding where I live in the local area,
•  where the school is located in our local area,
•  explain the route I take to school,
•  use aerial photographs and Google Earth to recognise basic human and physical features,
• use simple fieldwork skills to study the geography of the school,
• recognise how people’s actions can improve or damage the environment,
• learn about where their locality is in relation to the wider area of Swansea,
• learn about distance and how to follow directions and routes,
• use and make simple maps, to find where places are and how places relate to other places,
• identify natural features, e.g. rivers, hills, beaches, and the human features, e.g. buildings, roads, bridges, of their own locality,
• begin to recognise differences between their own locality, localities in other parts of Wales and in different parts of the world,
• learn about how and why people and places are linked, e.g. where family and friends live,
• thinking about questions and then asking them and listening to the answers,
• making observations and measurements and keeping records,
• making comparisons and identifying similarities and differences,
• thinking about how they will know if something has worked.

You can support your children’s learning at home by:

Going for walks in the local area and noting some of the physical features including road names and local buildings such as Bethlehem Church.

Teach your child their address and know the names of other streets near to them.

Make a note of your journey to school. Which streets do you walk on and what land marks do you pass ? E.g. a shop, church, traffic lights etc.