Huge thank you to the parents of Reception children who were able to attend the phonics reading workshop this week. I am sure you and your child have been really keen to jump into reading - fantastic start! As we said in the meeting, please, please do pop in and ask us any questions you may have - we are more than happy to spend time with you and supporting you.
This week……
This week we started to add more structure to our day. Both Reception and Year One have done amazingly well with the introduction of both Phonics and Maths sessions across the morning.
In Maths we have been exploring sorting objects into different groups, Year One really enjoyed a carousel of sorting activities where they were asked to sort in more than one way, anything from the colour of the objects to features that they had on them! They have been recognising and ordering numbers 1-10, matching objects to the numeral, counting accurately (we found that by moving the objects we knew we had counted them all as none were left behind) and subitising!
Reception have also explored sorting, looking at matching pairs of socks onto the washing line as well as then creating cages for the wild animals where they independently decided to sort based on what animal it was!
Sorting by colour
Moving objects to count accurately
Ordering numbers to 10
Phonics games
Letter formation on a friends back
Library time (every Thursday), sharing a book with a friend
Sorting by animal
Matching objects to numerals
Matching and ordering
Matching sounds
Finding letter sounds
Matching sounds and starting to blend to read
In Science this week we continued to join Kingfishers for our warm-up activity where we focused on exploring the properties of materials. This week we had our mystery shopping bag tasks, where we were asked to put our hand into the paper bag and describe what the object inside felt like and make predictions about what we thought it was. After a few unsure glances for fear of slimy or furry contents, both Kingfishers and Robins became material investigators, was it ‘hard or soft’, ‘stretchy or stiff’ and what could it be? The children worked well together to write down all their ideas and really helped each other to have a go at all five bags. We then separated back into our classrooms and selected our own object to draw and label, discussing why certain materials are used for different objects.
Tuesday led us to our second Pantomimus session with the children becoming fire fighters and moving their scarves rhythmically to the music as the ‘flames’ rose and fell. We then learnt our new song, ‘London’s Burning’ and enjoyed using actions to support us with learning it. Once we had explored the percussion instruments this week, we took it in turns to conduct our friends using the scarves to show us when to play loudly, softly or to stop playing altogether!
Within Art we continued to explore Andy Goldsworthy, recapping on which natural materials he had used to create some of his sculptures with the children sharing their amazement at how this had been possible. They then got the chance to explore a wide range of loose parts, from glass pebbles to seashells and used these to create their own sculptures, thinking of amazing names from ‘The hall of peace’ to ‘The sea around the sun’ for their creations!
Wednesday we headed out for our welly walk, we were looking at features in the village. We discovered that the village has a shop, a Church, a bridge and a river. I wonder what we will discover next week! Whilst on our walk, the Year One children were only too happy to use all their phonic knowledge to read the following…….
PLEASE HELP YOURSELF
Thank you so much to the kind person who offered these apples. We did not take any on this occassion but that is because it opened up a lovely conversation whereby the children decided that we already had apples in school so it would be best to leave these apples for someone who does not have apples.
If you live in the village and are reading this - then please feel free to leave little messages simply saying ‘hello’ it is so exciting when the children realise they can read the signs - a whole new world opens up to them!
The children were absolutely right - we do have apples in school, some we eat and some we used this week for cooking - thank you so much to Mrs Liddiard who came in this week to support the children in making an apple crumble. The classroom smelled absolutely fantastic and the children were feeling hungry (and the adults were too). The children picked the apples fresh off the school tress in the morning - we hope you enjoyed the crumble for your tea on Thursday evening.
And finally we finished the off the week with…..cheese and crackers - which this week included red peppers, carrot sticks, cucumber and marmite! Each week the children are becoming more and more adventurous with what they would like to try.
Phonics next week…..
EYFS will be learning sounds
i (we did not teach this sound last week so will squeeze it in this week)
n m d g o
Tricky words - to, into
Year 1 will be learning sounds
e-e (these) i-e (like) wh (when) o-e (home) ph (phone)
Tricky words - people, Mr