Blog week ending 12/11/21

 
Annnnnd breathe!

 

We started off our learning this week with an introduction to our class story bags. These are a wonderful device to get the children used to telling stories using the key narrative devices such as character, setting, problem and solution. We have enjoyed using the story telling chair to retell our own versions!

In our RWInc this week, the children have been learning the new sounds, l,h and sh. We discussed how ‘sh’ is a special sound as it is two special friends together who do not make their individual sounds, but one sound together. We like to use the saying ‘shhhhh, don’t wake the baby!’ to help our children remember the sounds of these special friends.

l: ‘down the long leg’

h:’down his head to the hooves and over his back’

sh: ‘slither down the snake’ then ‘down his head to the hooves and over his back’

We have been really getting to grips with our red words this week. We have now covered the, be, we, he, I and me. Please continue to practice these at home – adding in a new red word to focus on from the red word wall when the children are secure with the ones on the first. I have included all of the red word walls on this blog so that you are able to print them off and use them regularly with your child.

In our maths work this week we have been consolidating our understanding of composition of 1, 2 and 3. We have been playing a game where we had to choose numicon numbers out of Mrs Horne-Smith magic number bag and using our stem sentences to demonstrate the number bonds of 1,2 and 3 as well as choosing numbers more than 3 and less than 3. We then worked hard to order the numicon numbers  - it is a visual way for the children to see that with numicon the numbers go up in steps to demonstrate that as numbers continue along a line, they get bigger and become ‘more’.  Alongside this we have been developing our subitising skills as part of our mastering number programme and using the number blocks to create our focus numbers in different shapes.

Many parents have enquired what equipment would help aid their children’s mathematical development – we use Numicon for all of our maths activities alongside number blocks and number link cubes – these are all great ideas for stocking presents as the children love using them and they really help to develop number confidence.

In our afternoons we have been celebrating the festival Diwali. The children enjoyed learning about the story of Rama and Sita and how Diwali is called the festival of light – we discussed how it is a way to celebrate kindness. We worked hard to sculpt and decorate our own classroom Diva lamps and developed our understanding of our key vocabulary: festival, Diwali, Hinduism, belief, light and dark to explain our own understanding. The children were able to make links with the celebration we had learnt about last week: bonfire night and how fireworks were used for both to light up the sky! We enjoyed listening to Hindu music, creating rangoli patterns and decorating mendhi hand patterns as well as reading non-fiction books that told us all about the traditions and customs involved in this festival.

Later in the week we watched the cbeebies story of Remembrance Day:  ( https://youtu.be/pv_ub7Be7oA ) .You may like to watch this with your child and use some questions to gage their understanding of why we wear poppies? This video is a sensitive way of introducing the idea of remembrance to the children and why we should always think about those people who lost their lives to help protect others. The children really enjoyed creating Poppies within the classroom and enjoyed telling us how they were ‘remembering people’ as they created transient art and created their own peace poppies. We took this learning further later in the week as we talked some more  about remembering and looked in greater detail at the poppy.  We have made some beautiful poppy pictures in different ways.  In music, we listened to The Last Post and talked about what it means and how it makes us feel.

 In our PSHE session we have been thinking about "I'm special, I'm me!".  We have talked about what makes us special as individuals and how everybody is different As a family, you could chat about what makes each other special and different, you might even want to make a poster showing how everyone in your family is special and what makes them different from other people.
 
It was lovely speaking to many of you during parent consultations. I would just like to say on behalf of Miss Reilly and I, how proud we are of the children and how well they have settled into their first term in Reception!

Have a great weekend,

The Pear Class Team

 
 
Extraordinary Explorers!