Week Ending 24/03/23
Date: 24th Mar 2023 @ 1:52pm
Happy Friday! We have had another wonderful week in Reception and the excitement of our school trip and having our loved ones in for Stay and Play has certainly left us feeling a little sleepy! This week has been a week of exploration particularly with our exciting trip to Imagine That. We have enjoyed discovering and enjoying all the opportunities that came with our day out including making slime and snow, watching volcanoes erupt, painting our own fridge magnets and so much more! We hope you enjoy flicking through the many photos that are now on Tapestry. As one child put it 'BEST DAY EVER' and we couldn't agree more!
REMINDER:
We will be holding our Class Assembly on Tuesday morning. Please make your way to the Community Entrance for your child's allotted time.
- HEDGEHOGS - 9AM
- DORMICE - 9:30AM
Kinetic Letters
At parents evening, we spoke with lots of parents about the importance of fine motor skills on a child's writing journey. By enabling handwriting to become automatic, we remove that from a child's cognitive load when writing. This way they can focus on sentence construction and spelling. We do Kinetic Letters each more to give each child automaticity in their handwriting as soon as possible. You can help at home by encouraging play that strengthens little hands; playdough, tweezers, lacing, tying shoe laces, doing their own zip up, opening crisp packets/food boxes. In fact, developing independence and fine motor skills go hand in hand!
Dough Disco with Shonette is a firm favourite in the Early Years as it focuses on strengthening our fine motor skills making it easier for writing. Here is the link if you want to have a go at home. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spread+the+happiness+dough+disco
Phonics (Little Wandle)
Please see the downloadable attachment below to practise the sounds/words we have been learning this week. This will now be a regular feature for you to continue to support your child and consolidate what they have been learning in school that week.
Maths
In Maths, we have been exploring the concept of mass. We have been thinking about the language of ‘heavy, heavier, heaviest’ and ‘light, lighter, lightest’ to compare objects. This is a simple game to replicate at home with different objects around your home. Ask the children to predict which will be heavier then weigh them and ask them to use the sentence 'the X is heavier than the X' and vice versa. Consider investigating the misconception, 'are all large items always heavier? We used a grape and a balloon for example. We also talked about making the scales balance by making sure both sides of the balance scales are equal. We got the children to predict which items would be heavier/lighter/balanced by pretending they were a human balance scale using their arms! If your child uses the language of ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’ to compare/order two or three objects at home, then please upload these to Tapestry. Think about moments that make you say ‘WOW!’
Challenge!
An added challenge would be to use number bonds and explore which side would tip the scales. Write out different number sentences and choose two from a bag. Can your child quickly use their recall of number bonds to 'tip' their scales to show which is more or less? For example, 2 + 3 is more than 1 + 2 because 5 is greater than 3.
https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/scales/index.html
Talking Point - The Easter Story
This half term in class worship we have been looking at the events leading up to Easter Sunday. We have learnt about Jesus riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday, Jesus washing his disciples' feet as an act of selflessness and the Last Supper where he shared bread and wine with his friends. This week we have looked at Good Friday or 'God's Friday' and how Jesus died on the cross. We have discussed the different perspectives of how people felt during this time and the meaning of Easter. So what do we and others around the world do to celebrate this time in the calendar? You may want to explore this further and do some research as to how others celebrate this time of year.
Easter Bonnet Competition
It is that lovely time of year when the first signs of spring are upon us and Easter! This year on Friday 21st April will be having an Easter hat/bonnet competition for the children in Key Stage One and EYFS. Please could you support your child in designing and making an Easter hat or bonnet. Your hat could be made from card, paper, or use a baseball cap/sunhat/woolly hat as a base. Then allow your child to decide what they would like on their hat, it could be flowers, signs of new life such as Lambs, chicks and chocolate eggs. It can be anything linked to Easter. Please send the hat in with your child on Friday 21st, we look forward to seeing all the wonderful hats and bonnets! Pictures of the parade will be on Twitter and Tapestry. We will send out a reminder on the first day back.
On Monday, we arranged a conscience alley to answer the question ‘would you like to be a pirate?’ We discussed reasons for our decisions. Some said yes because they wanted to talk like one and others said no because they would be away from home for too long!
On Tuesday, we went on our first school trip of the year to Imagine That! We had the best day exploring the imagination village, participating in the science workshops and even made our own slime and snow to take home! Thank you to our parent volunteers for coming too.
On Wednesday, we thought about our trip to Imagine That and about our most memorable moments. We asked the children to write a sentence about their favourite part and why. It seems like it was a hit!
On Thursday, we were creeping towards the end of our story ‘The Pirates Are Coming!’ and asked the children to predict what might happen next and why.
On Friday, we got out the glockenspiels and had our first experience of performing using a musical instrument. We look forward to gaining more confidence using the wooden beater in the coming months. Watch this space!
Well done to our Stars of the Week, Isaac, Ola and Vadym!
Our mystery readers this week were and Flora’s Dad and Imogen'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 have availability for the whole of the Summer term.
Have a fantastic weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Nicholas
