Reception w/b 23rd September
Date: 27th Sep 2024 @ 4:31pm
We have thoroughly enjoyed Week 4 of Reception life! Having packed such a lot of wonderful learning experiences into just a week, I am sure we are all feeling rather sleepy at the end of the day but I am also so thankful for such a fun week with our lovely class.
Phonics lessons have continued with enthusiasm and the children have been ever so keen to reveal our next four sounds. What a joy it is to see such keen, joyful learners! Fred the Frog introduced us to the sounds: t, i, n, p. In addition to recognising/reading these sounds, we have also practised writing them, in some small groups. Unusually, our first two phonics sounds this week didn’t follow our ‘rule’; normally, our pencils stick to the paper until we have formed the whole letter. However, we need to lift our pencil off the paper to finish forming t and i. For n and p, our pencils were back to being sticky, making sure we went down and then back up again! We used the following handwriting phrases:
t – down the tower, across the tower
i – down the [insect’s] body, dot for the head
n – down Nobby, over his net
p – down the plait, over the pirate’s face
This week, we have also introduced ‘word time’ in small groups. We have been using magnetic tiles to spell some CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words using our known sounds (e.g. mat, sad, dad). In the ‘how to help’ document, the ‘learning to blend’ videos will help to support this skill; I have also used small cards in pocket charts when modelling this week, so this will be familiar. Continuing to ‘talk like Fred’ is also helping us to develop our oral blending skills. On our website, you will find handwriting sheets for each sound if you would like to practise forming t, i, n, p at home. Links to videos for each sound, along with oral blending videos, can be found in this week’s ‘How to support at home’ document. Thank you ever so much for supporting our Early Reading and Phonics meeting on Monday. I shall most certainly be uploading the slides but have made it a weekend job as it may take me a bit of time to record a voice over and upload!
In maths this week, the children have engaged with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. We have been helping Counting Croc to improve his counting skills! Last week, we used subitising to identify the number in a set; this week we have been developing our counting skills to enable us to identify how many there are in a set that cannot be subitised. This connects subitising and counting to cardinality whereby the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether. We have also helped Counting Croc to use 1:1 correspondence, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging the objects. We have also explored how all sorts of things can be counted, including sounds. This focus will continue into next week. Accurate counting is an essential skill for children to learn from an early age. Although this may seem straightforward, there are many counting concepts that young children need to master in order to become effective lifelong mathematicians. When a young child begins counting, they count by rote, meaning they will be able to say the number names in order simply because they have remembered the words and the order they go in. From this starting point, children then need to begin to master five counting principles. You will find information about these principles and activities to support children to develop these skills in our ‘how to help at home’ document. Remembering the names of the principles and all of the research behind them is certainly not essential! The important part is understanding what the 5 different skills are and supporting your child to master each of them.
This week, we added a new card to our visual timetable…‘English’. At this stage in Reception, our English sessions focus on oracy skills and, as they always will, have quality texts at their heart. In our English sessions this week, we were introduced to a traditional tale: ‘The Little Red Hen’. On Monday, we read the story all the way through. We thought about how each of the characters were feeling. We asked: Why didn’t the Little Red Hen share the bread with the other animals? We understood how frustrated she felt when the other animals didn’t help her and she felt as though she was doing all the work. One of the children likened this to tidy up time in school and how important it is to work together – we are a super Reception team. We discussed the fact that this is a traditional tale so there are many retellings of this story. For example, in the first story we read, there was a cat, dog and duck and, in others, a goat, cat and dog. Later in the week, we were introduced to our first story map of the year to help us to retell this story. The images on the story map and the Makaton signs we use help us to remember the story and to allow this learning to become embedded. Learning to retell this story will also allow us to learn so many more Makaton signs! It has been an utter delight to begin to learn the retelling of this tale with the children, listening to the voices that they add as they join in enthusiastically with the repeated refrains. Next week, we are looking forward to making our own bread, just like the Little Red Hen!
The traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen’ has been a wonderful hook for learning all about harvest. Learning about the steps the Little Red Hen has to follow to ensure the journey from seed to bread has helped us to understand the concept of growing and harvesting food.
‘Harvest’ is also one of our RE units this half term, running alongside ‘I am special’. To begin today’s
RE session, the children shared what they already know about Christianity and God. We then looked at a Bible and listened to the story of Creation, introducing the Christian teaching that God made the world and everything in it, for us to enjoy and share. God created an amazing variety of plants and animals and therefore we have wonderful food to eat. Christians give thanks to God for the wonderful food, the sun and the rain which helped to grow the food and the farmers who worked hard to grow and harvest the food. Therefore, a harvest church service is an opportunity to say thank you to God for all his gifts to us, especially the food at harvest time. This work links beautifully to thinking about our Brereton Harvest Appeal for 2024 and this year we shall be supporting the great work of CHANCE Changing Lives and the Brereton Food Bank. If you would like to donate items for our Harvest collection, please bring them to the classroom on Thursday 3rd October 2024. Next week, we shall be holding a short Harvest Service for parents, carers, grandparents etc. of children in EYFS and Years 1 and 2, on Thursday 3rd October at 9:30am, at St Oswald’s Church.
Harvest also inspired our first music lesson, where we enjoyed singing ‘The farmer plants his seeds’, to the tune of ‘The farmer’s in his den’. I have included a link to a version of the song in case you would like to sing along at home! https://youtu.be/WUkvbhWe8Lo We thought of actions to the song and enjoyed performing together as a class. We then were each given an egg shaker to play along to our song ‘shake your name’. This is a short song sung to the tune of Hot Cross Buns which encourages children to start thinking about rhythms in music by playing the syllables in their name. We also learnt two songs that we will sing regularly in our music lessons: the ‘hello everybody’ song and the ‘choose an instrument’ song.
As you can see from the photographs, the children have been working very hard in PE. We now know all of our gymnastics shapes! We know: star, straight rocket shape, straddle, tuck, squat, pike, dish, and arch. This will help us to progress further in the next four PE lessons, as we learn some jumps, rolls and even use some apparatus!
The wet weather did not dampen our spirits on our Forest School morning and, instead, provided a wonderful opportunity for learning and exploration as the children went on a worm hunt! Mr Simmons also showed us how to find worm casts which was ever so exciting.
Well, my goodness me, the children have accomplished such a lot this week! We are very proud of them. There is lots to look forward to in Week 5 of Reception, including making bread, printing with harvest vegetables and, of course, our harvest service. In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful weekend and hoping that you manage to stay cosy in this wet and cold autumn weather.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
