Week Ending 06/12/24
Date: 1st Dec 2024 @ 11:30am
Happy Friday! This week we finished our story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ by planning some imaginative traps to finally catch the wolf! I've also been introducing the idea of twisted traditional tales which draws upon already-existing fairytales and alters key elements. The children have LOVED storytime as we've read a series of books such as Jack and the Jellybean Stalk, Goldilocks and Just the One Bear and The Three Little Superpigs or The Three Little Ninja Pigs. Pop down to your local library to peruse these story books. They provide great fun for everyone!
Thank you for your support in providing your child with their base layers for the nativity. If you would like to help walk us down to the Church on Thursday/Friday please come to the main office for 9:15am on Thursday and 1:20pm on Friday. We aim to be leaving as soon as possible. Thank you in advance!
Dates for the diary:
- Nativity Dress rehearsal –Thursday 12thDecember
- Nativity –Friday 13thDecember at 2pm at St Helen’s Church. PLEASE CAN YOU LET US KNOW IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO PICK UP FROM THE CHURCH OR NEED TREEHOUSE SO WE KNOW WHO IS COMING BACK TO SCHOOL WITH US. WE WILL BE DISMISSING THE CHILDREN FROM ST HELEN'S CHURCH.
- EYFS Christmas Party - Tuesday 17th December. Children to come dressed to school in their party clothes!
- Christmas Dinner Day– Wednesday 18thChristmas jumpers worn and cracker needed.
- Last day – Thursday 21stDecember. Early finish - please pick up at 1:30pm. Treehouse will be operating as normal should you need wrap around care.
Phonics – Little Wandle
This week we have been revising all the Phase 2 sounds we have learnt using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. We have also been focusing on words with ‘s’ at the end (plurals and verb forms) such as ducks, shuts, pots etc. To support blending, we cover the ‘s’ and decode the word then add back in the ‘s’. The children have found it a little tricky to segment words with ‘s’ in. For example, cups = c-u-ps. Ask them to use their segmenting fingers to ensure they are not missing out key phonemes. This will heavily support their writing.
Next week we will be completing this half term’s phonics assessment. Your child's results will be recorded in their reading record and a percentage will be given. 80% is on track. Please see me if you require any support for home learning. In the assessment your child will be completing four activities:
- Grapheme recall (letter recognition) These include S, A, T, P, I, N, M, D, G, O, C, K, CK, E, U, R, H, B, F/FF, L/LL, J, V, W, X, Y, Z/ZZ, QU, CH, TH, NG, NK.
- Oral blending (c-a-t = cat)
- Decoding (by applying taught sounds to simple CVC words)
- Tricky words. These include put, pull, full, as, and, has, his, her, go, no, to, into, she, push, he, of, we, me, be, is, I, the.
It is imperative that your child is secure in these Phase 2 sounds to progress onto the next set of books.
In Kinetic Letters, we have been consolidating the Window Cleaner Family which all start with a down bump, flick (off the water). We also attempted to form the letter 'e' from the 'Special Squirter' Family. 'E' is on it's own as it has its own rules. We start just underneath Scared Monkey branch which allows us to 'push across, up, pull around and push (along the ground). The children have found this the trickiest letter so far. Practice makes permanent!
In Maths, we have been learning about 'adding one more' with the help of songs and stories. I read the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the children getting them to notice that each day he eats one more item. We then used multilink cubes to represent the food he ate. We noticed that it looked like stairs as it got one block bigger each time. Using stem sentences like 'one more than ____is____ or ____is one more than____. Developing number sense is really important so keep counting whether this be 1-10 or starting from different points and not having to go back to one each time!
On Monday, we enjoyed finishing the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’, we also watched the original Disney version! This really made the children laugh.
On Tuesday, we explained to the children that the pigs have gone missing! We went on a pig hunt in the classsroom and found photos of the pigs in different places. We then read captions to match to the pictures using positional language.
On Wednesday, Jack the Dog continued telling us about the next part of the Christmas story where the angels bring good news to the shepherds. We linked this to our school Christian value of joy and celebration.
On Thursday, in music the children suggested simple actions to illustrate what is happening for the lyrics in 'When Santa got Stuck up the Chimney' and 'The Reindeer Cokey'. We had great fun performing and listening to Christmas music and action songs.
On Friday, the children learnt about different Christmas traditions around the world. We recognise that people have different beliefs and celebrate special times in different ways. We then learnt the makaton version of Feliz Navidad!
Our Mystery Reader this week was Annika's Mum, thank you for coming to share a story with us!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Victor!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
