Author: Emma Kendrew

We’ve had so much fun with our book of the week Potion Commotion, we enjoyed hearing about Betty, making her own potion and saving the town from the hungry dragon.

Our classroom challenges included finding ingredients from in the garden to add to a potion and to make a trap to catch a dragon.

“I put sticky tap at the end so he will get stuck inside.”

“I’m going to trap him inside this big tub, we could put a biscuit in to make him come in.”

Maths
This week, we’ve been engaging in activities that highlight the purpose of counting – finding out how many objects there are altogether. We’ve reinforced our understanding of cardinality, recognising that the last number we say when counting represents the total number of objects in the set.

A key focus has been deepening our understanding of the number 5 as a quantity. We’ve been linking the number to familiar representations, such as the five fingers on one hand. The children are also beginning to explore different ways to represent numbers up to 5, using both their fingers and the Hungarian number pattern (die frame).

 

Help at home: Draw a hand on a piece of paper and collect 5 objects.

Reminders

• Odd Socks Day – Monday 10 November
  Children are invited to wear odd socks to school today, marking the fact we’re all different in some way.
• Children in Need: non-uniform day – Friday 14 November

Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Miss. Feldman, Mrs. Linton and Mrs. Cairnes

Welcome back! We hope you’ve had a lovely half term and are feeling well rested. This half term our overall theme is Light and Dark.

We’ll be using the following focus books to help us with our learning

See you all in the morning for some fun challenges and  some learning about St James.

It has been another fun filled week in reception, our focus book has been Leaf Man by Elois Ehlert.

In the book autumn has come, the wind is blowing and Leaf Man is on the move. No one is sure where he is going, but ‘A Leaf Man’s got to go where the wind blows.’ Our word of the week was ‘seasons’ we have talked about the four seasons winter, spring, summer and autumn. We have really enjoyed learning about the season of autumn, when the leaves fall from the trees, when some small animals like hedgehogs are looking for food to store and some animals begin to hibernate like a door mouse.

Help at home: Go on an autumn hunt and see if you can spot signs of autumn like acorns, pine cones, squirrels conkers and more. Don’t forget to send in some pictures to add to our seasons display.

Poetry Basket

This week our poem was Five Little Pumpkins.

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, ‘Oo, it’s getting late.’
The second one said, ‘There are witches in the air.’
The third one said, ‘Well I don’t care.’
The fourth one said, ‘Let’s run, run, run.’
The fifth one said, ‘Let’s have some fun.’
But oooh went the wind, and out went the light,
And five little pumpkins tumbled out of sight.

Phonics

This week the children have recapped all the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) we have covered so far this term. We have focused closely on our blending, the skill that helps us with our reading and our tricky words the, is and I. Keep up the great work everyone!

Maths

In Maths, some of our teddies have been arguing over who has more things. we have used the stem sentence

“… has more than..”

“…has fewer than…”

The activities this week have focused on developing the skill of comparing as children have been encouraged to look carefully and use the language of comparison to describe sets of objects.

‘Fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’ because the focus is on countable things.

Have a happy and healthy weekend

Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Miss. Feldman, Mrs Linton, Mrs Cairnes and Mrs Small

This week we have been reading Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter.

The story is a biographical children’s book about the famous artist, Henri Matisse. We learned about his life and discovered how, even when he became unwell and could no longer paint, he continued to make beautiful artwork by  cutting bold shapes and colours to create collages.

Our word of the week was artist. We talked about different types of art and artists, introducing new vocabulary such as sculptor, sculpture and collage.

Then, we became artists ourselves by creating our own colourful collages – just like Matisse!

We used our language and communication skills to explore and respond to Matisse’s artwork. We looked closely at the colours, shapes and patterns and thought carefully about which pieces we liked and why.

We also discussed questions such as:

• Why do you think the artist painted this?
• Which is your favourite, and why?

Here are some of our thoughtful responses:

I like the green shapes, they look like emeralds.

I can see pink and purple, I like that.

I like the white bit, it is a funny shape.

Phonics

This week, children have been learning the phonemes (the sounds that letters make) h, b, f, and l. They’ve also been practising writing the graphemes (the written letters) for these sounds.

We’ve also learnt a new tricky word: the.
A tricky word is a word that can’t be sounded out using phonics – it’s one they simply have to learn by sight.

The children now know three tricky words:  I, is and the

Help at Home:  You can support your child’s learning at home by writing these tricky words on pieces of paper or sticky notes and placing them around your house. Keep challenging your child to read them whenever they see them – the more practice, the better! These words need to be recognised instantly, just by looking.

Poetry Basket

Children love listening to and joining in with poems each week. We learn a new poem every Monday and recite it together throughout the week.

Saying the poems out loud helps us focus on sounds, rhythm and rhyme, which supports our early reading skills. We’ve noticed that some poems have a fast and lively beat, while others are slow and gentle.

Maths

In Maths, we’ve been using our subitising skills to identify patterns up to 4.

Subitising means being able to see a small number of objects and know how many there are without counting –  for example, recognising that there are three dots just by looking.

We’ve been using our subitising skills playing bingo this week.

Help at home – autumn leaves and conkers.

If you go on a walk this weekend, we’d really appreciate donations of dry leaves to help us with an art project next week.  We also need some conkers and acorns to use in our maths learning – see how many you can find! Thank you for your support.

Have a happy and healthy weekend

Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Miss. Feldman, Mrs Linton, Mrs Cairnes and Mrs Small

We’ve had a great week this week using our focus book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.

We listened for lots of different noises on our sound walk: we heard the dishwasher swishing, Mr Freeman and year 5 dancing to music, birds tweeting and the cars going past.

Our word of the week has been squelch the children have really enjoyed using this during their learning.

“I am squelching in the mud!”

Poetry Picnic

Each week we learn a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week our poem was called Falling Apples

Here is the tree with its leaves so green.
Here are the apples that hang between.
When the wind blows, the apples will fall.
And this is the basket to catch them all.

Phonics

This week, we have learnt the phonemes (the sounds a letter makes) ck, e, u, r. We’ve also learnt a new tricky word; I. 

During our phonics learning, we listened carefully to the initial sound in a word and sorted objects by the sounds they begin with.

Help at home: Look out for a ‘learn at home’ sheet which recaps the phonics learning from the week.  Please look at this with your child and complete the activities.

Maths

This week we’ve learnt that numbers can be composed of ones. We joined in with the STEM sentence “one and one and one make three” and made collections of three things for the three bears.

Have a happy and healthy weekend

Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Miss. Feldman, Mrs Linton, Mrs Cairnes and Mrs Small