Reception Class News

Celebrations

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

This week’s bible story

A persistent builder: Genesis 6:5-22

God gave Noah a pretty big job; God asked him to build a huge boat. Even though he didn’t live near a lake or ocean, Noah persevered in finishing the job that God gave him.
Someday, God might give one of us a hard job to do, too. God might ask you to be friends with a kid who everyone else is choosing to ignore. He might ask you to forgive a brother or sister who teases you every day. God was pleased with Noah’s perseverance, and God will also be pleased with you when you persevere in doing what is right.

Reflection:
What is the biggest project that you have built out of Lego, wooden blocks or something else?
How long did it take? Did it take much perseverance to keep going and finish the project?
What would have happened if Noah had given up and left the ark half built?

Prayer:
Dear God,
There are times when we face some hard challenges. Sometimes those challenges seem so big for us to do and to finish. Help us to persevere and remember that we can do it.
Amen

Apologies!

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!

A fantastic end to a fantastic first 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 Friday!

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.

This week’s bible story

The Good Samaritan: Luke 10: 25-37

Today, we’re thinking about how we treat people and reminding ourselves that we should never bully or intentionally hurt other people. First, think of some kind things that you could do today. Second, think of some things that you should not do today because they would upset other people.
Hopefully, many more of the kind things than the unkind things will happen today. Next, read the Bible story about someone who got hurt and think carefully to see who did and who did not help him.

Reflection:
In the story, someone had been badly hurt, or bullied, but only one of the three people who came by helped him. I wonder what we could learn from that story about how we treat other people, especially those who are feeling hurt or upset.
Think about these two suggestions for how you could help.
The first is that, if you see someone who is hurt or upset, don’t just ignore them – either go and help them yourself or fetch an adult who can help.
The second is to be prepared to help anyone, not just someone you like.

Prayer
Dear God,
There are times when we need help from others and times when others need help from us.
Help us always to be ready to help each other, even people we don’t like, just as Jesus taught us.
Amen

Parent-partnership Zoom session – maths

To get us in the mood for autumn, we’ve been reading Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. We looked closely at the illustrations, drew a picture of our favourite part and created a word tree full of adjectives to describe what autumn leaves look and feel like.

Next week, we will use our word tree to help us make missing posters for Leaf Man.

We also went on a leaf hunt to see if we could find Leaf Man on our field.
The creative chilli challenge was to turn a bare tree into an autumn tree.
Next week, we will continue learning about the autumn changes.

Number 3!
In early years, we like to be really practical to help us with our learning. This week, we’ve played lots of fun and active games to help us learn all about the number 3.

We did some racing games and handed out medals to our friends to help us learn about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd & 3rd)

We played the Three Billy Goats game.
The children used the cubes to build 3 towers to represent the 3 goats.
1 cube – littlest Billy goat
2 cubes – middle-sized Billy goat
3 cubes – biggest Billy goat
They then rolled a 1-3 die and moved the corresponding tower over the bridge. 
Played a track game.
We used hoops and beanbags to help us understand the parts that make 3. We threw 3 beanbags into a hoop and talked about how many landed inside and how many landed outside. The children were encouraged to record their learning in anyway they liked. Many of them chose to draw a picture of their hoop and where their beanbags landed.
Next week, we will recap numbers 1, 2 and 3 to finalise our learning.

Writing process
In phonics, we’ve started to write captions, e.g. a pin on a map or pat a pig.
To help us with the process, we follow six simple steps.
1. Think about what we want to write.

2. Say the caption aloud.
3. Count the words.

4. Segment each word on our phoneme fingers.
5. Write the words.
6. Check our writing makes sense.

When the children are confident at writing caption, they will begin to write sentences using capital letters and full stops.

Here are some more highlights from this week…

Finally…
I look forward to chatting to you about how well your child has settled at school at the parent-teacher meetings on Tuesday and Thursday next week.

 Home-Link Challenge
Their bag will be in their bookbag!
Thank you to all the parents who to do the home-link challenges. It is always lovely to receive emails of their amazing home learning moments!

Feelings

Last week, our living and learning statement was I can talk about my feelings. During circle time, we talked about a range of feelings and when they might change. We also had fun making lots of faces!
Can you guess how we are feeling?

Last Friday

Last Friday, a lot of children went home very muddy and this is why!

It was lovely to see the children sharing ideas, thinking critically, and most importantly having fun! One child set a trend by making bear prints. More children joined in and together they created their own bear hunt.