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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Foundation Stage geography

Little girl with globe
What will your child be learning in Foundation Stage geography? We take a look.

Foundation Stage geography is where your child begins to gain a wider experience of the world around them.

Your child will learn through first-hand experiences to explore, observe, problem solve, predict, think critically, make decisions and talk about the creatures, people, plants and objects in their natural environments.

The teacher or practitioner will ask your child open-ended questions, for example, “What can you see here?” to help your child to think and make connections between ideas.

Children learn about seasons, the weather, features in the local area and the buildings that surround them. They may be shown photographs of the local area to help them identify features, for example a library, railway, church or mosque. They will also be encouraged to record their findings, perhaps through drawing, writing, and modelling.

Lesson examples

Here are the kinds of activities children might get up to in class:

  • Children practise pushing the button at the pedestrian crossing and watching for the green man.
  • During the spring and summer, the children observe the life cycle of frogs, butterflies and annual plants in the garden and pond and describe and draw the changes over time.
  • Children are encouraged to look at the different road signs on their way to school and find out what they mean.
  • The teacher encourages the children to talk about the different shapes of windows and sizes of buildings on a walk.

Help your child at home

Try these tactics to support your child’s school work:

  • Develop your child’s geographical vocabulary and awareness of the local environment by talking about topics, such as the weather, seasons, the features you pass on the way to and from nursery or school (buildings, the postbox and the zebra crossing).
     
  • Talk about the journey a letter takes, the role of people who help to sort and deliver the mail – where does the postman get all the letters he delivers?
     
  • Expose your child to as wide a range of places and cultures as you can. Remember, you can do this through the resources around you (such as pictures, maps, television programmes, posters, visitors, stories, artwork, and music) as well as through travel.
     
  • Introduce your child to maps, an atlas or a globe. You can use these to tell stories about different places in the world, talk about hot and cold climates, or to point out countries where people you know come from.
     
  • Find the geography in your home. Where in the world did your furniture, ornaments or kitchenware come from?