Week Ending 20/01/23
Date: 19th Jan 2023 @ 7:06pm
Happy Friday! This week we have truly been in our very own Winter Wonderland. The snow has put a big smile on our faces and we have loved seeing the children roll snowballs, decorate snowmen and even create their own snow angels. We’ve also had fun changing our weather on the calendar to ‘snowing’ as we find ourselves fully immersed into these Winter months.
This week we have been introduced to our new story book 'Let's All Creep Through Crocodile Creek' which takes us on an adventure through a creek. We have been thinking about the different journeys we make day-to-day (house to school, to the park, to Delamere forest). The children had lots of ideas about the journeys they had made over the Christmas holidays including visits to Santa, light trails and exploring new places.
Dates for the diary!
- Friday 27th and Saturday 28th January – PTA Beer Festival! Come and join us from 6pm at the Community Centre.
- Thursday 2ndMarch – World Book Dad (Bedtime story theme- wear pyjamas to school!)
- Tuesday 21stMarch- Imagine That Trip
- Tuesday 28thMarch – Hedgehogs class assembly (9am) Dormice class assembly (9:30am)
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This week we learnt four new sound OO (as in boot), OO (as in cook), AR, and OR using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. The mnemonics for these new sounds are very catchy so if your child is struggling to recall the grapheme ask them to recall the phrase to help them remember. My favourite is ‘OR, born with a horn’ which is a picture of two unicorns, how lovely! We practised reading these words by decoding and then saying the sounds in our head to read fluently. The children are having lots of opportunity to practise reading fluently in our Reading Practice Sessions, using prosody (their teacher voice) and answering lots of comprehension questions. A useful tip to enhance children’s comprehension skills is to use the starter sentence ‘I know that because…’ When reading at home you might get the answer “I don’t know” to a question but keep encouraging your child to reread to support these useful skills. They do know it, but may need more practise. Rereading for fluency is key! Think: Does the picture tell you anything? What have you read which can help you? Is it a word? Something someone said?
BOOKS
Thank you so much for bringing back your books this week! Just to clarify, your child will be coming home each week with THREE books.
TWO of these books will be sent home on a THURSDAY
- A Library Book (a book for you to read to your child)
- A Non-Decodable book (a book your child will need support with)
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.
All books to be returned by the following THURSDAY in order to change them.
In Maths, we have been playing lots of counting games that require us to count both forwards and backwards and saying the number names in order to 10. We played a game by passing an object around a circle, if you said 10 you were out! We also challenged the children to play a similar game but you have a choice of one or two numbers to say at a time. You could extend this game up to 21 and have a choice of one, two or three numbers at a time. The children are always on the look out to try and catch you out and make you say 21! In our starters we’ve been singing lots of number songs such as 5 Little Ducks, 5 Currant Buns and 10 Green Bottles. These are particularly useful for counting backwards!
In Kinetic Letters we have been practising the Slider Family letters (V, W, X, Z, K). For these letters, we need to avoid starting with ‘down bump’, rather ‘sliding’ making a diagonal line to the ground. The letter ‘K’ is the trickiest yet as the action requires sliding in two different directions in the same move. E.g. Start at Brave Monkey Branch ‘down bump, pen off, slide in from Scared Monkey, slide out (to the ground). The sliding in and out will take lots of practice. We want to avoid backwards sevens! It should look like a penguin’s beak as they seem to have lost them all in our ‘Slider Family’ book when Bounce and Skip visit the Antarctic. Keep practising your three friends hold pencil grip at home as this makes all the difference to your child’s writing.
On Monday, we started our brand new story 'Let's all Creep Through Crocodile Creep' by receiving a letter that had been left for us in the classroom by three friends, Rabbit, Tortoise and Mouse who had been on an adventure. We discussed the different journeys we had been on both near and far.
On Tuesday, we discussed a journey we had all made together recently, to the Church! We looked on Google Maps and then drew our own simple map and labelled key physical features of our walk to Church including shops, traffic lights and even The Swan!
On Wednesday, it was time for the children to make their own map of their journey to Church and label it by applying the sounds that they have learnt so far. They did a fantastic job!
On Thursday, the children were challenged to traverse the equipment with an added ladder as a challenge. In music, we learnt the song ‘Five Little Monkeys’ as a rap and played a variety of copy cat rhythm games.
On Friday, we had a very energetic Wake Up Shake Up! In the afternoon Mrs Line and Mrs Palmer discussed modes of transport and we made a variety of vehicles to transport us on our adventures.
Well done to our Stars of the Week, Teddy and Gracie!
Our mystery readers this week were Ellis’ Dad and Ted’s Mum. Thank you for coming to share a 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 many available dates this term so please get in touch if you would like a go!
Have a fantastic weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Nicholas
