Blog week ending 13th November
*Apologies - due to a technical difficulty our blog pictures will not be uploaded until next week. Please check back in on the blog then to see some of this weeks learning.
Well that was a short but sweet week for us here in reception – but one we managed to fill it to the brim with our super learning nonetheless! We apologise that we have been unable to have our own day to reflect and join in with the fundraising for Children in Need. We hope that you have been able to enjoy some of the activities that we uploaded to the website and would encourage you to talk with your children about the purpose of this day and why we are fundraising.
Our RWI work this week has centred around these three new sounds:
v- Down a wing, up a wing (vulture)
y- Down a horn, up a horn and over his head (Yak)
w- Down, up, down, up (worm)
We had great fun creating watches, using our sequins and tissue paper to decorate the ‘y’ sound and producing our very own bubbling volcanoes! There has been more work on Fred talk this week both during carpet time and in our classroom provision and we would encourage you to continue this at home. Creating sound hunts around the house along with pictures and see if your child can a) connect the sounds with the pictures and b) attempt to use Fred talk to sound out and blend. At this point children may only be hearing the initial sounds in words, some can hear the initial sound and the last sound such as ‘ct’ and some children may be able to blend all of the sounds into one word: ‘cat’. Our red word for this week is he. Please continue to practise these words at home: I, the, me, we and he, as well as encouraging your child to work on the formation of their letters using the rhymes – we can see wonderful progress so thank you for your support with this so far.
In our maths work this week we have been focusing on the number 7, the children have been counting with 1;1 correspondence and adding stars using the language of ‘more’ up to seven. We then went on to play the magic number game. Try this at home with your child – draw a number line to 10. Think of a magic number and your child has to guess what number you are thinking of by process of elimination using the language ‘is your number more than 2.. is your number less than 9’ this is a brilliant way to increase place value understanding and the children have loved this game this week.
Following on from this in our maths work, we have been doing lots of singing to consolidate our understanding of one less. We all took turns pretending to be bakers and sang the five current buns in a bakers shop song. We noticed that every time a current bun was taken away we were left with the number that comes before that number. We practised jumping back spaces to show when one current bun had been bought from the baker shop and then counting how many are left now- our first steps on the ladder to understanding subtraction.
In our topic work we have had a week of remembering. We watched a lovely video that explains Remembrance Day to children on the Cbeebies website. You may wish to watch this with your child and they can explain to you what is happening in the video. We talked about picture symbols and how the hat in the video represented the soldiers and the Poppies that grew on the battlefield symbolised the soldiers who lost their life's. Whilst it is important to share with our children our heritage, we also worked on critical thinking – asking the children why it is important to remember those who sacrificed in the past? We were very impressed that many children were able to make the link that we remember those who fought so that we can have peace now and so that we do not make the same mistakes again. We have produced our own transient art of the poppy fields that grew on the battle grounds, worked together to create a class wreath and practised speaking a poem that sums up our understanding of the poppy.
Alongside this, we have had a big focus on stories this week to help us to develop our communication and language skills. We have a new story telling chair in Pear class and the children have been using our story telling bags to tell stories to their friends with a narrative structure and clear sentences. It has been wonderful to see the enthusiasm and confidence this has brought to all of the children – story time at the end of the day is no longer being ran by me, but by the children who are telling their own stories based on their own work during the day, or by using real stories in the same way you will be using the wordless books with your children at home.
We apologise that due to unforeseen problems setting up passwords, we were unable to get the Bug Club passwords out to you this week. They will be sent out next week and all children will start off on the lilac band of wordless books.
*Well done to Libby Murdy who is this week’s star of the week for her wonderful stories and for being a kind friend !
Have a fantastic three-day weekend! We will see you next week for lots more fun and learning.
Laurie Horne- Smith