Week Ending 7/10/22
Date: 1st Oct 2022 @ 1:36pm
Happy Friday! Just like that another week has flown by and our Reception children have let their imaginations run wild. This week we have started our new Pathways story, The Gingerbread Man. We really got the week off to a flying start with some flour footprints that had been left in the classroom. Throughout the week we have been coming into the classroom with lots of clues left by a certain biscuit! The children have absolutely loved all the things the Gingerbread Man has been getting up to and we can't wait to see what he does next on his adventure. Keep a look out on our Twitter for more updates in the coming weeks!
Reminder
- Monday 10th October - Harvest Festival 9:30am (St Helens Church, Tarporley)
This week in phonics we have learnt CK, E, U and R and the children are excited to read their first few online books with these taught sounds. Please encourage your child to sound out a word using their ‘robot arms’ and ‘blending hands’. They will know what you mean as we practise these repeatedly each day! We have also learnt some harder to read and spell words: TO, GO and INTO. These will be in your online reading books for this week as the children begin to read longer sentences. Some parents have made us aware that the books disappear from Oxford Owl once you click that you have finished. In order to read the books multiple times, you may have to refrain from clicking that you have read the book until you have read it a couple of times. We will also start sending home a real reading book from this week. This week we learnt our first digraph ‘CK’ which is where two letters make one sound. Other examples are ‘ai’ as in ‘rain’ or ‘oa’ as in ‘goat’. If you want to learn more about phonics then please watch Miss Nicholas’ video on the school website. Here is the link: http://www.tarporleyce.cheshire.sch.uk/page/what-is-phonics/3454
Miss Nicholas will also be holding a Phonics workshop on Thursday 20th October at 2pm if you would like to drop in and find out how we teach phonics in school and some tips and strategies to support your child in their early reading journey.
Next week we will be completing a short phonics assessment with your child which will consist of recognising the grapheme (letter) we have learnt so far (S,A,T, P, I, N, M, D, G, O, C, K, CK, E, U, R) and being able to orally blend and segment simple CVC words. In your reading record you will find two ticks and an arrow which will be the next step in their learning.
In Maths, we have been focusing on comparing numbers 1-5. We met number 4 and 5! We continued to recognise our numbers and order them using the language ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’. E.g. 5 is greater than 4. 2 is less than 3. We have been learning some number songs to support us including 5 little ducks, 5 speckled frogs and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to help us with saying our number names in order. These are great for reinforcing number names and exploring the concept of take away/less than/how many left. We also continued to focus on subitising numbers to 5 and dice work is a great example of knowing these numbers just by looking at a group of objects. Snakes and ladders is great for both subitising numbers on a dice but also number recognition. I have uploaded some activities below should you wish to continue learning at home. These are optional.
Fruit
Each day the children are offered free fruit and milk at snack time in the morning. Please feel free to send in a piece from home, especially if your child only likes select fruit! We get a random selection each day so are not sure what we will have from one day to the next. Please ensure there are no cakes, sweets, popcorn in their book bags for this time.
On Monday, we came into the classroom to find some mysterious footprints had been left which led us to a recipe. We talked about the things we might find in a bakery too. We were inspired to draw our own Gingerbread Men which included a Halloween version and a Gingerbread Family. We have a lot of creative minds in EYFS!
On Tuesday, we had our second workshop with The Happiness Club team who brought us a happiness jar. We thought happy thoughts and wrote some down to put into our jar when we need a pick-me up from time to time.
On Wednesday, the gingerbread man had left even more footprints! He also left us a video for us to watch where he had stolen our Lego. To get them back we had to create our own traps.
On Thursday, we played lots of phonics activities where we focused on initial sounds and oral blending using our robot arms and blending hands. We finally found our stolen toys which were being closely guarded. This led us to The Gingerbread Man and we read the first few pages of our new book.
On Friday, we read the story of Leaf Man and created our very own Leaf Man portraits using natural materials. They looked very realistic!
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Bea and Kian
Our mystery reader this week was Zachary's Dad and Grace's Dad, 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 are fully booked for the this half term so please do let us know if you would like to come and we can put it in the diary.
Have a fantastic weekend and happy reading!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Nicholas
