Week Ending 19/04/24
Date: 23rd Mar 2024 @ 7:59pm
Happy Friday and welcome back to the final term of Reception! I can’t believe I am saying those words but there’s still time lots of fun still to come! Summer is one of the best terms to be a 4/5-year-old as the sun begins to shine down on us, the list of memories gets longer. Well done to everyone that completed the Easter Challenge Booklet, we were so impressed with how eager the children were to continue their learning over the holidays.
A Polite Request
Please may we remind you that as the days get warmer, ensure your child brings in a water bottle, a sun hat and apply sun cream before school. All of which should be labelled. If your child requires a top up through the day we advise the roll-on sun creams which your child can independently apply themselves. Although this may be a future message to you as right now it's more April showers then sunny spells!
Dates for the diary this half term:
Monday 6th May – May Day (school closed)
Tuesday 21st May - Class Photos (please come to school in smart school uniform including a jumper/cardigan).
Friday 24th May – EYFS Sports Day 9am – 10am (weather permitting). We ask that your child come to school in either a yellow, red, blue or green top, this is dependent on which coloured house your child is in.
Beeston – RED
Cholmondeley – BLUE
Peckforton – GREEN
Chester – YELLOW
If your child doesn’t know which house they are in, just ask them which coloured house points they put in their pot and this should give you the answer! Alternatively, please come and see us and we can confirm.
Save the date - Park Hall Farm Trip
Our final Reception trip of the year will be to Park Hall Farm in Oswestry to link with our farmyard poetry next half term. This will take place on Wednesday 5th June. The children will need a packed lunch, comfortable walking shoes and trousers. Please ensure they wear a school jumper to identification purposes. A letter has been sent home this week so please check your emails!
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This term we move onto Phase 4 in our phonics journey! The children do not learn any new phonemes or graphemes. Instead, they are taught to further manipulate the phonemes and graphemes they have already learnt. They will begin to explore more polysyllabic words (words containing more than one syllable) and read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. E.g. string, milk, brush, scoop etc. Phase 4 requires the children to blend an increasing number of sounds together. These words are often referred to in relation to how many vowels and consonants they contain.
E.g. CVC words (consonant / vowel / consonant) such as sad, net, him.
This week we have been focusing on CVCC words (consonant / vowel / consonant / consonant) such as went, help, tent etc. We have also learnt the tricky words said, so, have, like.
As always, please see the downloadable attachment below to practise the CVCC words and tricky words we have been learning this week.
Reading books
Thank you for your continued support in your child's reading journey. We are so proud of how far the children have come with their reading. However, we do seem to have a several books missing from a few sets so please can I ask that you check at home for any books you may have. Unfortunately, if books are not returned by each Thursday we will be unable to exchange their Little Wandle book for the following week. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
In Maths, we enjoyed ‘Double Trouble!’ We learnt that doubling means having two groups of equal amounts that are added together. The children practised a doubling song and made doubles butterflies! Doubles are best described as two equal parts. We have been using the stem sentence to help us find the whole when adding two of the same number together. “8 is made from 4 and 4: 4 and 4 make 8”.
On Monday, we came into the classroom and found a beach scene before out eyes. The beach had been littered full of plastic bottles, straws, netting, plastic cutlery and lots more. The children exclaimed it was ‘a mess’ and we worked together to talk about the problem and collect and clear the rubbish. What a great hook to our new Pathways book ‘Clem and Crab’!
On Tuesday, we revealed the front cover and predicted what the story might be about based on the clues that were given. The teachers then got into role as ‘Clem’ where the children asked questions about what Clem likes and dislikes about the beach.
On Wednesday, we had a fun PE lesson with Mr Elton where we learnt how to do the long jump. We then talked about the Olympics and where athletes take part in the long jump like Greg Rutherford. The children were amazed at how far he could jump and how he earned himself a gold medal in London in 2012.
On Thursday, we started reading the book where we find that people have left lots of rubbish on the beach. We looked through the rubbish we collected on Monday and talked about the advice we would give people going to the beach. The children created some fantastic posters from this fabulous discussion.
On Friday, we held our annual traditional Easter bonnet parade around the school grounds. Well done to all of our KS1 and EYFS children on designing and creating such beautiful bonnets. You can find these photos on our school Twitter page (@TarporleyCE) and on Tapestry.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Tristan and Florentine!
Our Mystery Reader this week was George T’s dad. Thank you for coming to share your story with us!
Please speak to your child’s class teacher to put a date in the diary if you would like to be mystery reader. We still have some dates left for this term, so please get in touch if you can help!
Friday 7th June 3pm
Friday 14th June 3pm
Friday 21st June 3pm
Friday 28th June 3pm
Friday 5th July 3pm
Friday 12th July 3pm
I have also attached the Summer Newsletter to the blog as well as to our class pages. Please do take a moment to read over to ensure you are fully up-to-date with everything that is going on this term.
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Woodward
