Please don’t forget to email us any pictures of your home learning. We would love to see how you’ve been getting on and what you’ve been up to!
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
The weather is glorious today!
Make sure you get out in your garden and see what you can find.
You could change the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ to ‘We’re Going on a Bug Hunt!’
Read! Read! Read!
Remember to keep reading lots of books on a daily basis.
Here are some suggestions from Book Trust.
Phonics
Words to read:
Words to Write:
How did your child find the writing activity?
Remember, it is okay for things to be spelt phonetically. It is important your child grows into an independent learner. Encouraging your child to write the words as they sound rather than always spelling correctly we encourage the children to use their own skills – rather than copy from an adult.
Literacy Activity
Twinkl challenge card! “Choose a new book to read. Stop reading in the middle of the story. Can you guess what will happen at the end? Were you right?”
You could use your school decodable or love of reading book to complete this challenge!
What did your child predict would happen in the story?
Were they right? Or did they come up with a better ending? Let us know via email.
Maths Activity
Twinkl-Careful counting- More and fewer (within 10).
(see page 7 in your pack)
How did your child find todays activity?
Remember, you can use objects around the house to count to help your child.
If you have any questions we are here to help and will respond to emails in school hours.
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Monday
Phonics- Body Percussion
Play ‘Follow the Leader’ with your family. One person chooses some body percussion (for example, patting their knees, clapping their hands or clicking their fingers), the rest of the family have to copy the leader. Take turns to be the leader.
Activity- Toys
Have a look at your toys at home. Can you find a toy that can move, a toy that makes sounds and a toy that lights up? How do you make them work? Talk to your grown-up about the different ways your toys work. You could draw a picture of your favourite toy.
Tuesday
Phonics- Listening Walk
Go on a Listening Walk with an adult around your house and in your garden. Practise listening carefully to all the different sounds you hear. Talk about what you heard. Did you recognise all the sounds? Were they loud or quiet? Were they long or short sounds?
Activity- Be Creative!
Make a colourful collage. You could use bits of old fabric, paper, cardboard or even natural materials, like petals and leaves from your garden.
Wednesday
Phonics- Listening Walk
Go on another Listening Walk with an adult around your house and in your garden. Talk about what you heard. Did you hear anything different today? You could draw some pictures of the things you heard.
Activity- Counting
Sing number- themed counting rhymes and use your fingers or small props to help you count, e.g. 10 Green Bottles or 5 Little Speckled Frogs.
Thursday
Phonics- Voice Sounds
Play an animal themed guessing game. Make some sound effects for different animal noises and encourage someone to guess what animal sound you are making. You could ‘meow’ like a cat, ‘woof’ like a dog or ‘hisss’ like a snake. What other animal sounds can you make? You could sing ‘Old MacDonald’ with you adult.
Activity- Nature Scavenger Hunt
Go on a nature scavenger hunt around your garden. Use the checklist to tick off the things you find. I wonder what you will find… (see pack for checklist)
Friday
Phonics- Oral Blending
With a grown-up, play a listening game about a visit to a farm. “I went on a farm and I saw…” – instead of saying the animal name, split the word up into 3 letter sounds. Encourage your child to identify the animal by blending the 3 sounds together. For example: “I went to the farm and I saw a c-a-t.” “It’s a cat!” Try the words; cat, dog, pig, hen, cow, fox, duck.
Activity- Positional Language
Use a favourite toy or teddy and place it in different places around your house. You might place it under your bed, on top of the cupboard, in front of the TV or even in the bath! Encourage your child to describe the position of their item.
Please see your pack for other daily fun activities!
Please use the email address below if you have any questions about the home learning activities.
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Phonics
Words to read
:
Was your child able to blend the four daily words today? Encourage your child to use their ‘phoneme fingers’ to help them when reading words.
A phoneme is a unit of sound. So when sounding out words with digraphs/trigraphs those 2/3 letters is one unit of sound. For example; chip is sounded out as ch/i/p – using 3 fingers.
Phonics Activity: Twinkl- Draw a line to match the caption with the picture (see page 5 in your pack)
Literacy Activity
Visit pobble365.com. This website has daily pictures. Use the arrows to find the most interesting picture you can (or use today’s daily photo) Discuss the photo and write what you can see. Perhaps you are even inspired to come up with your own story based on the image!
Did your child have a favourite picture? Did your child make up their own story? Let us know via email. With each photo there are story starters and questions to help encourage your child’s imagination.
Maths Activity Twinkl
Finding One Less:
If you do not have toy cars, you can use anything! Dolls, teddies, pieces of food- any objects you can count!
Challenge: Can you record your findings either by drawing your objects and crossing on off each time or writing it as a number sentence (ie. 5-1=4)
What objects did you use when finding one less?
Was your child able to predict without counting?
Please use the email address below if you have any questions about the home learning activities.
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Foundation 1
Your child has been given a home learning pack. These activities will be posted weekly on the class news ‘Foundation’ page at 9am on Mondays. This pack will support your child for two weeks – up until the Easter break. The pack is set out in days but it is entirely up to you how and when you complete these tasks. Also, if you think of some of your own activities, don’t forget to share them with us too.
Foundation 2
Your child has been given a home learning pack. This contains a daily phonics, literacy and maths learning task. The home learning pack has enough learning activities/resources to support your child for two weeks – up until the Easter break. The activities from the pack will be posted on the class news ‘Foundation’ page daily at 9am. In addition we will be adding questions which will help you support your child.
After the Easter break we will be posting online daily learning tasks. These will include a phonics, literacy and maths activity. The tasks will show on the class news ‘Foundation’ page. They’ll be published daily, Monday to Friday, at 9am. Each the three tasks should take about 20 minutes each.
Remember!
Please talk and read with your child on a daily basis. Share stories and read different types of texts. You could even make up your own stories!
We really want to keep in touch with everyone so remember you can email the Foundation teachers.
Email us if you’re unsure about some aspect of the home learning or if you want to share what you have been doing. The email address is the one you use to send your photos of home learning moments .
A reminder of the email address – stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
We will aim to reply on the same day and no later than the following morning.
We look forward to hearing all about your learning at home this week.
Foundation had so much fun making pancakes. They carefully cracked the eggs and measured the correct amount of milk and flour. After, they mixed them together to make a smooth mixture. Miss Feldman used the frying pan to fry 10 pancakes! We watched carefully from a distance. The F2 children did some instruction writing after. Of course the best part was… EATING THEM!
One of the challenges this week was to make a playdough pancake. The children have loved pretending to flip and fry them!
Cooking and baking are fantastic real life experiences for children! If you do cooking or baking at home, please send us some pictures. We would love to see these!
The foundation classroom is such a busy place!
Mindfulness can help children to take control of their emotions and feelings.
This week, Foundation have started to take part in mindfulness sessions. The children watched a video called Rainbow Breaths which allowed them to practise how to control their breathing. This is a great technique for children to use when feeling upset or frustrated. We used battery operated tealights to help transform our classroom into a calm environment.
Take a look at how focused the children are…
We have made a Friendship Stop area in the classroom. This area allows the children to write kind notes to their peers. At the end of the week we will be handing out the notes. Below are some of the notes already written this week.
Next Tuesday is Internet Safety Day. Foundation have already started to think about how to stay safe when online.
This week, we have been focusing on the story Once Upon A Time Online by David Bedford and Rosie Reeve. The story follows some of our children’s most well recognised and well loved fairy tale characters such as Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood on a journey that started when a laptop arrives. The book delivers an important message about making sure that when you do go online, you always ask a grown up, and use the internet sensibly.
We also read a story about Smartie the Penguin. Ask your child if they remember Smartie’s special song.
“Before you click click click…
you need to think think think …
and tell someone!”
This week, our Living and Learning statement was I know what a drug is. On Monday, Foundation had a special visitor from D:side called Dave. He talked about: medicine, healthy foods and brushing teeth. The children sat really well and answered lots of questions – showing off their super knowledge!
Some of the answers…
“You should brush your teeth in the morning and at night.”
“Medicine makes you feel better.”
“I eat lots of fruit and vegetables!”
“I only have medicine when I am poorly.”
The children were eager to put their hands up – this was great to see!
Some more great highlights this week in Foundation…
Foundation’s Home-Link Challenge
Please use this Time to Talk sheet, to talk about and share your favourite story that links to castles.
It could be a traditional tale (like Cinderella or The Princess and the pea) or any other story involving princesses, kings, queens, knights, dragons or anything else that lives in or visits a castle!
This will mainly be a talking focus. We will ask your child about the beginning, middle and end, about characters and settings and their opinions of the story. They could draw a picture and add labels and/or a sentence on the Time to Talk sheet.
If you would like to send us images to print, please send to our email address: stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Welcome back Foundation!
We hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year.
This week, our Turrets and Tiaras topic has got off to a good start! The children have loved exploring the new role play area. They have enjoyed dressing up and acting like Kings and Queens. In literacy, we looked at different castles around the world and the different parts of a castle. The F2 children designed their own castles and wrote invitations to a party at a castle.
In maths, we are looking at the number 7. The children used Numicon to make 7 in different ways. The children were brilliant at noticing the numbers within 7.
“I can see 6 and 1.” “I can see 5 and 2.” “I can see 3 lots of 2 and 1 more”
At the beginning of the year, the F2 children did a self-portrait. On Wednesday, the children used the mirrors to draw another self-portrait. It was great to see the progress from September to now! Come and have a look at their updated self-portraits.
Well done Foundation for another amazing term!
Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!
