Weekly Ending 17/10/24
Date: 9th Jan 2025 @ 8:05pm
Happy Friday! This week we have taken a walk through all four seasons as we emerged ourselves into our new Pathways book 'A Walk in the Woods'. This beautifully illustrated book helps us look and find through the seasons as we compare each one to the other. The children have been great detectives in spotting the clues amongst the pages to identify the season Oscar, Lucy and Jasper the Dog are in. I might take a leaf out of their book and head on a lovely winter walk this weekend. Perhaps you might do the same! I wonder what signs of winter your child can spot using this week's learning to help.
Thank you to those who attended the 'Parent Partnership Meeting' on Wednesday. If you were unable to come, I have attached the powerpoint presentation to at the bottom of this page. You can find the link to the video on our Dormouse class page.
I have also attached the Early Years Framework where you are able to see the 7 areas of learning and development we assess against in Reception. These include our prime areas (communication and language, personal, social, emotional development, physical development) and specific areas (literacy, mathematics, understanding the world, expressive arts and design). These can be found on pages 12-16.
Dates for the diary (Spring Term)
- Friday 24th and Saturday 25thJanuary – PTA Beer Festival! Come and join us from 6pm at the Community Centre.
- Tuesday 11th/Wednesday 12thFebruary – Parents Evening (face-to-face in school)
- Thursday 6thMarch – World Book Day
- Monday 31st March - Trip to Crown Bank Quarry Nature Reserve. Parent volunteers needed if you're available!
- Wednesday 2ndApril – Dormice class assembly (9am – school hall)
In Kinetic Letters, we have been practising consolidating last week's learning and forming the remaining letters in the Slider Family (Z and K). For these letters, we need to avoid starting with ‘down bump’, rather ‘sliding’ making a diagonal line to the ground. The children cheered once we had finished learning the final 26th letter! A remarkable achievement in such a short time. They found the 'K' the hardest but perservered and never gave up. We will soon get the hang of it as the term goes on. Please continue to use the laminate Kinetic Letters whiteboards that we handed out last half term. Keep practising your three friends hold pencil grip at home as this makes all the difference to your child’s writing.
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?
In Maths, we met Numberblock Six which has been incredibly useful to deepen our understanding of subitising different arrangements of numbers 2-6 and not just like the pattern we see on a dice. Subitising is knowing a number without counting! We have been using part-whole models again to partition (split) number six into two parts. We have used our multilink cubes to make towers of 6 and physically split them into two to then recombine to make our whole (six). We even attempted to write our own number sentences to correspond with our part-whole models. This is an easy thing to replicate at home. All you need are three plates and six pasta shells or even sweets. Can your child write the matching number sentence? Be as creative as you can! Please remember to upload any home learning to Tapestry. We always love to see this!
On Monday, we started our brand new story where we used 'book talk' to discuss the front cover and what we could see. This is great when reading aloud to your child as you can delve into so much inference, prediction and language development without even opening the first page! The children guessed that the book had to be about the changing seasons. We discussed which season we were currently in. Miss S then drew around one of the children on a roll of paper and we 'dressed' the drawing in appropriate clothing for the season we are in!
On Tuesday, the book took us on a stroll through the woods to an opening of a meadow. Lots of flowers could be found and we used 'because' to explain our choices for our favourite flower. We then looked at a beautiful illustration where we were able to again use the pictures to explain our reasoning for it being summer. We thought back to a time it was hot and discussed different ways in which we can keep safe in the summer sun.
On Wednesday, we compared the seasons we had looked at already. We then used our prediction skills to work out which season came next and what would happen to the leaves on the trees. We gave the children sentences with key words missing. They then had to go on a hunt around the classroom to find the hidden words to put back in the right place. Reading back your sentence is a big part of the early years as it helps us make sense.
On Thursday, in music we learnt about beat and tempo. We discussed that the beat is a bit like a heartbeat and that the tempo was the speed of the music. The children were able to listen to a range of clips and clap their hands along to the beat. We then repeated this activity but instead we changed the action to stomping, tapping and jumping. Listening is one of the key components of the music curriculum and so we do a lot of this during our music lessons.
On Friday, we finished our book with greeting the children in a bobble hat, scarf, gloves and a thick winter jacket. The children instantly knew we were in Winter. Our book highlights lots of animals throughout the different seasons. Mrs Line introduced the word 'hibernate' and we identified pictures of animals that hibernated and those that don't. We then followed a recipe to make fat balls for the birds!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Annika!
Our Mystery Reader this week was Wesley's mum. Thank you for coming to share a story with us!
Dates available for Mystery Reader:
Friday 31st January 3pm
Friday 7th March 3pm
Friday 14th March 3pm
Friday 21st March 3pm
Friday 28th March 3pm
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
