Week Ending 06/10/23
Date: 24th Sep 2023 @ 4:37pm
Happy Friday! It’s finally starting to feel like Autumn has arrived, darker nights setting in, jumping in muddy puddles and conker walks! Nothing quite says Autumn is here again like conkers falling from the trees to the delight of children up and down the country. These are one of the most iconic signs of Autumn and provide endless fun and discovery. The children have been learning about how these glossy brown seeds are from a horse chestnut tree and they grow in green spiky cases. The shells often fall to the ground and split on impact to reveal the shiny conker inside. I wonder how many signs of Autumn you can spot on your next walk outside? (See sheet below)
Dates for the Diary:
- Harvest Service – Tuesday 10thOctober 2pm. We will need adults to help us walk down to church at 1:30pm, please let the office know if you are able to help. Thank you.
- Stay and Play - Wednesday 8th November 2:30pm. In Reception we do not have books, instead we use Tapestry to update you on your child's progress each week through observations. Therefore, we are inviting you in to spend some time in your child's classroom and enjoy some time choosing to learn where they do each day. This will then finish at normal time (3:20pm).
- Imagine That Trip – Thursday 9th November. Please ensure you have given permission online. We still need two parent volunteers to assist us on the day. Please let me know if you'd like to join us.
Parent's Book Viewing
As you may have seen on the latest Primary News, parents from across the school are invited in on Wednesday 8th November to look at their children's work in books e.g. Maths book, English book etc. However, in EYFS we do not have books, we use Tapestry to keep up updated weekly on your child's learning and progress. You are invited to come in for the last hour of the day and choose to learn with your child. We look forward to seeing those that can make it.
Cauliflower Cards
Please don’t forget to complete your cauliflower cards design and return it to school once you have placed your online order, thank you. The deadline for the artwork to be back in school to be sent off to Cauliflower Cards is Friday 20th October. We are unable to accept any artwork in school after this deadline.
Little Wandle - Phonics
This week we learnt four new sounds CK, E. U and R using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. We introduced the children to their first (of many!) digraphs which was CK. A digraph is two letters that combine together to correspond to one sound (phoneme). For instance in the word sock, neck or tick. CK is a good first digraph to learn as we tell the children that it can only ever come at the end of a word and never at the start. After half term, we will be introducing more sounds with an increase in digraphs. We have also learnt the tricky word 'I'. ‘Tricky words’ are words that cannot easily be decoded (‘sounded out’ and read). This is because some of the sounds in the words are spelled in an unusual way. These words need to be learnt by heart. As always, I have attached the Little Wandle Home Learning sheet to support the sounds we have learnt in school this week.
Your child will be bringing home two books; the one they have shared with their teacher in the sessions (your child can read this independently) and a library book (a book to share as a family). It is VITAL these are returned in good condition and on time to maintain learning for everyone. If the book is lost or damaged, a fine of £5 will be asked to replace it. The Little Wandle Decodable book will be sent home on a FRIDAY after your child has finished their final read with their group. A comment will also be available in your child’s reading record on this day. Please ensure you are checking these to support reading at home. In your reading record you will find two ticks and an arrow which will be the next step in their learning. When reading with your child encourage them to turn the pages themselves and hold the book carefully, thank you.
All books (Little Wandle decodable book and sharing book) are to be returned by the following FRIDAY in order to change them. We will be keeping a log book containing the books your child will be bringing home. Please speak to me if you need further clarification.
At the back of the book there are prompts and guidance for supporting your child with the book. It is especially useful for comprehension questions and the sorts of things you could ask your child to check their understanding of what they've read.
For more information regarding books coming home, please follow the link https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
In Maths, we have been focusing on comparing numbers 1-5. We met number 4 and 5! We continued to recognise our numbers and order them using the language ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’. E.g. 5 is greater than 4. 2 is less than 3. We have been learning some number songs to support us including 5 little ducks, 5 speckled frogs and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to help us with saying our number names in order. These are great for reinforcing number names and exploring the concept of take away/less than/how many left. We have also been focusing on our counting skills with the help of Jack the Dog.
On Monday we we read the story of The Little Red Hen. We added actions to the story and retold it using puppets in our choosing time. We also had our first Reading Practice session in small groups. We introduced the children to book behaviours such as reading the title and the blurb to help us find out more and use our predicting skills and holding the book correctly and using our holding fingers (thumb and index finger) to turn the pages. Please continue to practise this at home. It's a real skill!
On Tuesday we retold the story of The Little Red Hen using pictures to help us. This is a good skill to learn and can be practised after your child reads their reading book. Can they remember what happened in the right order? We drew story maps for the Little Red Hen to help us continue to retell the story. The children created some amazing pictures and were able to remember lots of details from the story.
On Wednesday, Jack the Dog brought us a special story from the Bible about Joseph and his brothers. We learnt about how we need to say sorry or forgive people if they have made a mistake. We linked this to our Christian value of 'forgiveness' and thought about times where we have forgiven someone.
On Thursday we made our own Dormice bread! We kneaded, proved and turning our bread rolls into dormice by following a set of instructions. Delicious! We also read a story called ‘The Family Book’ and focused on a variety of families we found in our book. We talked about who was in our family and what we liked to do together. We know that families come in different shapes and sizes and that we are all unique. We even came up with that we are apart of our own school family.
On Friday we enjoyed going to celebration assembly and our weekly Wake Up, Shake Up! The children moved in time to the music and learnt lots of new actions. In the afternoon, Mrs Line put some final tweaks to our Harvest song ready for next Tuesday. We also went to the library to pick a Sharing Book to take home. These stories are for you to share as a family and for the children to build up a love of reading. They also need to be brought back on a Friday and changed.
Sharing book
In order to encourage your child to become a lifelong reader, it is important that they learn to rea for pleasure. The sharing book is a book they have chosen for you to enjoy together. Please
remember that you shouldn’t expect your child to read this alone. Read it to or with them. Discuss the pictures, enjoy the story, predict what might happen next, use different voices for the characters,
explore the facts in a nonfiction book. The main thing is that you have fun!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Henry!
Our Mystery Reader was Honor-Grace's Mum! Thank you for coming to share your story with us!
Please speak me if you would like to be Mystery Reader and we can put you in the diary. Remember you can have other family members come and read a story too. Thank you for all our volunteers for filling up this term. The next available Mystery Reader date is in the Spring term. I will post the dates nearer the time.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
