Blog week ending 15/10/21
We have enjoyed moving on to some new sounds in our RWInc sessions this week, with the sounds ‘o,c and k’. It would be fantastic if you are able to spend some time at home practicing these sounds with the children. I have included a RWInc sound mat that features the rhymes to go alongside the sounds so you are able to say the sounds with your child to ensure correct formation.
I have noticed that Bug Club has so far only been accessed by a couple of parents. I would urge you to use this online reading platform as it does work alongside the phonics sounds we are learning at school to reinforce these sounds as the children begin to read.
In our maths work this week we have been thinking about size differences. We enjoyed reading the story Goldilocks and the three bears and the children ordered some items according to size using our key vocabulary to see which items would be better for each of the bears. We looked at the words biggest and smallest, tallest and shortest, middle sized, thin and wide as well as extending our descriptions to tiny and large.
This was also a good way to introduce the children to some vegetables that they may not already know - we all found the name butternut squash very funny and even funnier when we compared this to Mrs Horne-Smith being the taller teacher and Mrs Vicky to being similar to the swede because she is the shorter teacher! An excellent way to develop your children's interest in healthy eating is to take them with you on a trip to the supermarket and allowing them to choose one item each week that they have not encountered before, allowing them to investigate how it looks, feels, the size of it and creating a tasty dinner with it to develop their interests in the healthy foods around them.
Using the Harvest vegetables from our Investigation Area in the classroom, the children size ordered and talked to us about the similarities and differences they could see, referring to the colours, the textures, the shapes and the size. A job over the weekend could be to have your child size order some items from your kitchen cupboards, encourage the use of description and comparison – difference is always an easy one because it is all about contrast, but the children are still struggling to understand that word similar.
Our topic work has centered around Harvest and the produce that we are lucky enough to find in our supermarkets due to the hard work of others. We enjoyed watching a video that explained all about the combine Harvester and how this large machine worked to harvest the corn, wheat, barley, oats and rye that is growing in farmer’s fields - the children enjoyed referring back to our prior learning about the Little Red Hen and how the hen harvested her own wheat by hand and took it to the windmill to turn it into flour! We enjoyed singing the song Big Red Combine Harvester and if you ask your child, they may be able to tell you what the word threshing means and tell you all about the parts of the Combine like the teeth and the cab. We enjoyed taking this learning further outside as the children created their own Combines in groups using large loose parts. It was wonderful to see the team work involved and the differing ideas. Alongside this topic the children enjoyed hammering tees into pumpkins, digging vegetables out of soil, playing with our small world harvest farm and writing invitations to their Harvest party in the home corner.
*Our Harvest video is now on the website - scroll down to watch it! Sorry for the delay!*
This week I introduced the children to a special club – Drawing Club. This club is in response to stories and it is a way to develop the children’s communication skills, strengthening and refining their fine motor skills and story dreaming to break down stories and develop their own imaginations. It is an exciting way to see the progression and development of the children’s physical development alongside their language skills throughout the year so you may start to hear whisperings about this exclusive club!
Later in the week the children have been lucky enough to meet their new teacher Miss Reilly.
I've really enjoyed getting to know Pear class more and seeing what we all like to do. On Thursday and Friday we have continued to think about Harvest, creating different Harvest pictures and playing on the farm. We have particularly enjoyed sharing the story of The Enormous Turnip. We really enjoyed acting it out and working together to pull the enormous turnip up. We have also had fun creating different repeating patterns, including making some with potato printing!
Until next week....
We hope that you have a lovely restful weekend,
The Pear Class Team