Week Ending 18/10/24
Date: 2nd Oct 2024 @ 4:50pm
Happy Friday! In Reception, we believe that ‘Play’ is how children learn best. Through play, our children explore and develop learning experiences, which help them make sense of the world. They have the opportunity to practice skills, develop ideas and think creatively alongside other children as well as individually.
The EYFS framework includes 7 areas of learning and development that are equally important and inter-connected. However, 3 areas known as the prime areas are seen as particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building children’s capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.
The prime areas are:
- Communication and language
- Physical development (both gross and fine motor)
- Personal, social and emotional development
The prime areas are strengthened and applied through 4 specific areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts
These will be the main talking points of Parents Evening next week.
Autumn Walk - (Afternoon of Monday 21st October)
On Monday, we hope to go on our annual Autumn walk where hopefully we will find an abundance of conkers to collect. We will be back in time for pick up at 3:20pm.
Your child will need:
- A waterproof coat (labelled)
- Wellies (Labelled)
HOMEWORK - WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Next Friday we will be completing a lovely activity by exploring photos from the past and recognising changes through time in the form of our Dormice children as babies! We will be observing the photos together, listening to the opinions and ideas as the children try to guess who is who. Our discussion will focus on articulating our ideas in full sentences and answering questions such as 'is there anything you can do now that you weren't able to do as a baby?' Hopefully this will generate lots of talk! If you are able to, we'd love for you to upload a picture of your child as a baby to Tapestry for us to match the child in the class. Thank you for your support.
Snack
As you are aware, KS1 and EYFS are entitled to free snack throughout the day. In Reception, we have a rolling snack each day whereby your child can choose to have a healthy piece of fruit or veg during the morning/afternoon. Please could I ask you to refrain from putting chocolate, sweets, crisps or cartons of juice in their book bags as per our healthy food policy. Thank you.
Dates for the Diary:
- Pupil Progress Meetings - Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd October
- Children in Need - Friday 15th November (Chocolate donation to the PTA Fair. Donate online – Dress down day)
- Christmas Fair – Friday 6th December
- EYFS Nativity Dress Rehearsal – Thursday 12th December
- EYFS Nativity – Friday 13th December
- Trip to see Santa – Monday 16th December
- Christmas Dinner/Jumper Day – Wednesday 18th December
- School closes 1:30pm finish – Friday 20th December
Pupil Progress Meetings - Please remember this is in person and not online!
This will take place next Tuesday and Wednesday evening so come to the main office and I will come and collect you. We have 10 minutes as I’m on a tight schedule. If you have concerns, I'll give you a chance to raise them at the beginning of our conversation as that will be priority. Please come with any questions you may have and I'll be sure to answer them as best as I can. I will talk about how they have settled into 'big school' (socially and emotionally), their current academic learning and their next steps. I look forward to speaking with you all about your wonderful children then. If you wish to go into more detail about some of the points raised we can organise a meeting for after half term.
Kinetic Letters
This week we have introduced the children to our Kinetic Letters handwriting sessions. This will focus on correct letter formation to support early writing. At Tarporley, we use Kinetic Letters as our handwriting scheme. Some of you will already be aware of this from older siblings but if you are unsure, then please have a look at the page on our school website for more information: http://www.tarporleyce.cheshire.sch.uk/page/handwriting-kinetic-letters/51112
We are starting by learning the ‘Jumper Family’ which contains the letters h, n, m, b, p and r. Kinetic Letters introduces writing on a line from the start and teaches them that all letters start from the ‘brave monkey’s branch’ (top of the line) or the ‘scared monkey’s branch’ (middle of the lines). No letters start from the ‘ground’ (bottom line)! To support your child at home, please encourage them to start their letters from the right place, hold their pencil correctly and provide lines for them to write on. I have attached a video where you will be able to see the correct formation as modelled by Miss Nicholas with the three letters we have learnt this week, H, N and R. These all follow the same starting action of 'down bump, back up, push over'. If your child is struggling to form these letters, try practising by tracing the letters in sand/glitter or even flour first using the 'down bump, back up, push over' mantra for the Jumper Family. We also use big movements to help us remember it too by doing it in the air first. If you would like us to photocopy a template of our whiteboards for practice at home then please let myself or Mrs Line know.
We have taken a photo of your child's starting point in their writing which has been uploaded to Tapestry today. Please do take a look and speak to myself or Mrs Line should you have any questions or need any help in supporting your child in this area.
Little Wandle – Phonics
This week has been ‘assess and review’ week where we make sure the children are remembering what we have learnt so far. The children really impressed us with their blending, segmenting and grapheme recognition. There are no home learning sheets this week so please see previous blogs if you wish to practise these. Please continue to use the grapheme information sheet to support the Phase 2 sounds we have learnt so far.
In Maths, we have been focusing on the language of one 'more' and one 'less' than a number to 5. We made the numberblocks using the unifix and realised that they looked like stairs! Each time the numbers are getting one more, but if we can backwards then they are getting one less. We ordered the number tiles 1-5 and asked the children to stand on number 3. We took it in turns to roll a more/less dice (+ and -) and the children had to move one more/less using the language 'one more than 3 is 4" and similarly with one less. Vocabulary is such an important part of the Early Years Framework and maths is no different. Keep practising using the vocab 'more/less' in your daily activities. E.g. we would like 'more' sweets, but 'less' broccoli on our plates! Another great activity is singing lots of counting songs such as 5 Little Ducks, 5 current buns, 10 Green Bottles or 10 in the bed.
Ideas for home!
https://earlyimpactlearning.com/14-one-more-one-less-games/
https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/beeMoreOrLess/
In Mastering Number, we have been focussing on using the language of comparison to describe sets of objects we can see. As adults, we always model the language of 'more than' and 'fewer than' to describe how many objects there are in a set.
Suggested activities
- Set up a game of skittles, using empty plastic bottles or similar items, and allow the children to try knocking them down by rolling a large, soft ball. Ask the children: Who has knocked over more than […]? How do we know? Who has knocked over fewer than […]?
- Compare Fingers - who has more? Who has fewer? "Mummy has more than X and X has fewer than Mummy'
- Building two towers to compare (stack of books, Lego, Duplo, cups etc)
- Using two teddies and placing two different quantities on their plates.Use the stem sentence: [Teddy/Monkey] has fewer _____ than [Teddy/ Monkey]. [Teddy/Monkey] has more than [Teddy/Monkey]
On Monday, we read some more of our book where the Gingerbread meets some new characters. We picked out some rhyming words from the text and played the game 'Silly Soup'. Rhyming is such an important skill for early reading so keep practising wherever possible!
On Tuesday, we read some more of our Gingerbread Man story. We found a letter from the Gingerbread Man who needed our help to find his buttons! We looked everywhere (including outside) and discovered that they had sounds that we had learnt on when we found them. We made some simple CVC words then went outside to put the buttons back on the Gingerbread man by drawing around each other in chalk.
On Wednesday, we practised orally segmenting the sounds of some animals the Gingerbread Man meet on his journey. In small groups, we looked at different pictures and used the magnetic letters to make some CVC words such as dog, cat, hen and pig. Segmenting is the opposite of blending. For instance, man = m-a-n. We used blending for reading and segmenting for spelling. This will play a big part of next half term when we introduce the children to letter formation and writing.
On Thursday, we explored how to use different body parts to make a variety of sounds. We started by playing a sound pattern game where Miss Selwyn sent a special message to the first person in the group and they had to pass it on around the circle. The children quickly picked up the message and so we used different body percussion to make different sounds. Apologies if 'yes we have, yes we have' to claps, stamps, chest slaps etc comes home. We had great fun instead of using vocal sounds!
On Friday, we thought about signs of autumn in preparation for our walk on Monday and the differences we notice between the changing seasons. Mrs Line then took the children on a hunt in the school grounds with various signs of autumn to tick off on their checklist!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Holly!
Our Mystery Reader this week was Rose R's Dad! Thank you for sharing you story with us!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
