Blog week ending 20th November
Phew! We made it through a whole week!
As always, the classroom has been a hive of activity and we’ve got news of great learning to share.
In our Read Write inc work, we are so close to knowing all of our set 1 sounds. Just 4 more to go and then we’ll be having a big celebration to mark the momentous occasion! This week we focused on:
th - we put our tongue between our teeth as we say this sound to distinguish it from ‘f’ sound
z - zig-zag-zig!
ch - we practised a COVID safe ‘achoo’ into our arm!
We have extended our red word bank and we have practised our green word decoding too. Next week, we look forward to sharing some more home learning resources for Read Write Inc with you through the class website and there will be an information video from Mrs Grimes to share our next steps as we begin our journey into reading and writing.
In our number work, number 8 has been our focus for the week. We have learnt to form this number and we’ve been working with our numicon to find pieces that are more than 8 or less than 8. We then talked about how many more/fewer we needed to make it equal to 8. This level of dialogue is crucial in establishing a secure knowledge of place value up to 10. Maybe you could count some snacks out onto a plate over the weekend. Are there more/fewer than 8? What do you have to do to make this amount into 8? Do you need to add some more or take some away? In addition to this, we worked on 1 more and 1 less this week. We found that the children are able to calculate 1 more very confidently but 1 less seems a lot trickier. We are learning that when we find 1 less, we have to take one away. It would be great if you could focus on 1 less this weekend. If you can add a picture of this to your child’s 360 journal, even better! As above, we are looking forward to sharing some home learning resources for maths with you next week which we hope you will find useful in these difficult times when we can’t meet with you in person through our usual curriculum events.
As part of our shape space and measure work, the magic box has been out again this week and Mrs Horne-Smith blew up a square into a cube! We counted five square faces on this shape and found many objects in the classroom that were cube shaped. We then used lots of our magic spells to create a cuboid and counted that this shape has six faces but we found that looking at the cuboids shapes in our classroom, some cuboids are made up of six oblong 2d faces and some are made up of four oblong faces and two square faces. Using our new found shape knowledge we made our on mini hedgehog shelters using the cube and cuboid blocks, explaining what we knew about these shapes as we worked. It would be helpful if you could continue to consolidate this shape knowledge at home, looking for the 3d shapes that we have learnt in the environment - the cone, cylinder, cube and cuboid.
As you’ve probably gathered, it’s been all about hibernation this week in reception! The children enjoyed finding out about animals that hibernate. The queen bee came as quite a surprise! We made hedgehogs out of clay and enjoyed adding lots of prickles. Then we looked at what a hedgehog needs to make a cosy shelter for hibernating. We planned our own hibernation shelters which required us to write all of the sounds that we could hear in our important words - the children were great at this. Then we took to the field and got making! Enjoy the photos. Ask your child to explain what a hedgehog does to prepare for winter and what they need in their shelter.
As it has been anti-bullying week, we’ve had a real focus on being kind and recognising that we are all a little bit different but all equally special. Giraffes Can’t Dance was our vehicle to open up this discussion. The children all recognised how hurtful it is to be called weird. We celebrated difference and sameness through some wonderful dancing in PE.
Thanks to everyone who has logged on to Bug Club. We do hope your children are enjoying the bright and colourful stories. We’ll keep adding new titles each week. Do let us know if you’re experiencing difficulties with logging on and we’ll do our best to assist.
We’ve certainly been feeling the chill when we’ve been outside at playtime and lunchtime this week so it’s definitely time for warm coats, hats and mittens everyday please. There’s nothing worse than feeling cold and that wind can be biting on our school field.
We do hope that you all have a fabulous weekend and we’ll see you with big smiles next week when we’ll be exploring the world of nocturnal animals,
Laurie Horne-Smith