Author: Mrs Wood

This week, I got the pleasure of teaching PE, and what a fabulous lesson we had. The children were so excited when they saw the big apparatus!
Before the lesson started, we had a discussion about keeping safe when on the apparatus. The children had to remember 3 key safety tips:

1. When landing, always bend your knees.
2. Do not climb past the blue bibs.
3. Only jump-off where there’s a mat.

To finish the lesson and to help us with our upper body strength, we had some fun swinging on the ropes.

Reception love to dance! They always ask, “Can we do the Superheroes and Monster Moves videos?” 

Check out our amazing dance moves!
Monster Moves
Superheroes Unite

You could click on the links and join in the fun at home.

Today, we kicked off Anti-Bullying week by coming to school wearing odd socks. This morning, we had a long discussion about bullying and what is it.
I asked the children, “What is Bullying?”
We had some fantastic answers…
“When you hurt someone.”
“When you are unkind.”
“When you hit or kick someone.”

We then talked about kindness and what that is.
Many children said…
“Being helpful.”
“Sharing your toys.”
“Letting friends join in.”

For the rest of the week, we’ll be reflecting on how we can be kind and helpful to our friends.

The year 5 and 6 children came to read with the Reception children last Friday afternoon. It was a huge success and all the children were really engaged and listening to their year 5 or 6 reading partner. It was lovely to see some of the Reception children showing off their reading skills!

This week, the Chilli Challenges have been a big hit! Many children had a go at some of the challenges and many completed all of the challenges – a big well done to those children!

Here are some of the Chilli Challenges in action:
Using our cutting skills to make a paper plate Poppy.
Making the correct amount of playdough poppies. We enjoyed subitising and talking about how we arranged the poppies onto the playdough mats.
“Two poppies here and one over here… three poppies altogether”
“Four poppies and one more equals five poppies.”
“A group of two and another group of two… four poppies.”
“One and another one makes two.”

Using cubes and rulers to measure our feet. They particularly enjoyed comparing the size of each other’s feet.
Using a drawing app on the iPad to draw pictures of the poppies growing in Flanders Fields.
Phonics
We’re almost at the end of phase 2. Next week, the children will be taught the final 3 phonemes: l, ll, and ss. This week, we’ve noticed lots of children using their phonics skills when doing independent learning activities.

Using our segmenting skills when writing a sentence about Remembrance Day.

Using our blending skills to read captions.

Reading cvc words on a word hunt.

PE
On Wednesday, Mrs Palmer taught four animal gymnastic positions: cat, seal, frog, and butterfly. To end the lesson, the children moved across the mats like animals. Mrs Palmer told me about how fabulous they were at stretching their arms and pointing their toes.

Notices

• Please return your child’s yellow sound book on Monday 22 November so we can stick in the phase 3 sounds.
• It’s Anti-Bullying week next week. To kick off the week, we are taking part in Odd Socks Day.  Children can come to school on Monday wearing odd socks!
• It’s also Nursery Rhyme week. All week we’ll be learning about different nursery rhymes. To finish the week, we ask children to come to school dressed as their favorite nursery rhyme character. (This is also a non-uniform day for Children in Need – they’ve clashed!)
• Please make sure your child’s Christmas production clothes are in a named carrier bag.

Home-Link Challenge

Finally…
Thank you to all the parents that came to the Reception drop-in session. It was lovely to see lots of proud children sharing their amazing learning with you.

This week, the children have been learning about celebrations: Diwali and Bonfire Night. Here are some snapshots of what activities we did to support our learning…
We used chalk to create fireworks.
We designed and made rockets.
We decided to change the writing area into a fire station. The children enjoyed role-playing fire officers. They pretended to answer 999 calls and made a note of any emergencies on incident forms. Each time we looked up there were fire officers putting out fires in different areas of the classroom. I think we must have had about 10 fires a day in our classroom!
We made Diva Lamps at the playdough table.

We made Rangoli patterns on pegboards.
In PE, we continued the theme and moved around the hall like fireworks.
Maths 
Number 4 is our new focus number. After watching the Numberblock Four video, we noticed that the number 4 is a square number.  We talked about the different shapes the Numberblock made and had a go at making our own shapes using the cubes. We made different arrangements using conkers and talked about our arrangements, for example,
“I’ve made a triangle with one conker in the middle.”
“One, one, one, one. One in each corner.”
“I’ve got one conker at the bottom and three at the top.”
“I’ve made a square like Numberblock 4.”
We’ve decided to change the Reception timetable for maths. Instead of trying to squeeze maths in every afternoon, we are doing two maths focus days at the end of the week and three shorter maths inputs at the beginning of the week. By doing longer sessions at the end of the week, we can spend more time deepening the children’s understanding. They will now learn a new focus number every two weeks.

Phonics
We jumped straight back into our phase 2 phonics sessions. The children learnt three more phonemes (e, u, r) They also learnt two more tricky words (no, go)  These words can’t be blended.
Please keep using your sound book to practise recognising the phonemes and your word passport for blending words.

Pen disco!
On Thursday, we started pen disco. They enjoyed making large and small marks when dancing with their pens to the music. This activity supports fine motor skills and helps to improve pencil control.

News!
I finally got married in the October half-term!
My new teacher name is Mrs Wood.
The children have been a lot better than me at remembering my new name.

Reminders

• Don’t forget to come along to the Reception drop-in session on Thursday 11 November.
• Please make sure your child’s reading book is in their book bag every day.
• The winter weather is creeping in! Please make sure your child comes to school in a suitable winter coat.
• Don’t forget to join the Maths Zoom session on Tuesday 09 November at 6 pm.

Home-Link Challenge

Oops!

We forgot to hand out the next word passport words. These will be sent out on Monday 01 November. Sorry!

Have a good half-term!

What have we been up to this week?
We had a long discussion about all of the autumn treasures in their brown bags.

We went on our local walk around Wetherby to look at landmarks.

In literacy, we made missing posters to help find Leaf Man.
We used the leaves from our brown bags to make Leaf Man.

We read Funny Bones and used chalk to draw skeletons.
Check out their amazing drawing skills!
On Tuesday, the children found three frozen hands with spiders trapped inside. Of course, they were eager to rescue the spiders! We heard lots of great discussions about how to melt the ice.
“We need warm water.”
“Break it up into small pieces.”
“I’m going to squeeze it in my hand so it gets warmer and melts.”

In maths, we talked about more and fewer. The children picked up a handful of bears and compared their amount with a friend. The children were encouraged to use these stem sentences when explaining their answers:
… has/have more than …
or
… has/have fewer than …

Word passports
The second set of words to go in word passports have been sent out today. Please practise blending these words at home over half-term.

Finally…
It was lovely to speak to all of the Reception parents at the parent-teacher meetings.  You’re doing a great job with the home-link challenges – thank you! I hope you all have a wonderful half-term. Don’t forget to send me lots of photos of what you get up to. Make sure you recharge your batteries ready for another jam-packed half-term starting Monday 04 November.

Finger gym activities are designed to work out the smaller muscles and fine motor skills in children’s hands and fingers.  Every Friday the children will explore a range of fun activities to help get their fingers ready for writing.