Friday 23rd February

Useful information and requests:

• Our Fairtrade café is on Thursday 1st of March. You are invited to join your child at our cafe to buy a fair trade drink and snack and we will sing you a song. The children will be making some chocolate krispies using fair trade produce. These will be on sale at the cafe. If you are not able to attend please put a donation in an envelope and we will ensure that your child gets something from the cafe.
• Please can you ensure that your child's home/school book is in their book bag at all times in case we need to write you a message (especially on Wednesday as we always look at them then).
• Parents consultations are coming up soon. You will be asked to make your appointment online.  Daytime consultation appointments will be as follows:  Ducks-  Monday 12th March 9am -12pm   Robins- Wednesday 14th March 9am-12pm. Evening appointments are available on Thursday 15th March for Duck and Robins  3.30pm- 7pm.
•  Thursday 29th March Celebration Assembly at 9.15am and repeated again at 1.30pm (The Reception children stand up to perform one thing).
• Thursday 29th March- Term ends at 2pm
• If you took jogging bottoms out of your child's PE kit please could you check that they belong to your child as we have a pair missing from Robins class. Thank you.
  Things to do...
• Recap this weeks phonemes- ai, ee, igh.
• Read with your child
• Discuss the importance of staying healthy- healthy food, need for sleep, exercise and healthy friendships. We also touched on stranger danger and staying clean.
• Practise subtraction with your child and sing songs  that involve subtraction -ten green bottles, 5 little ducks, Encourage your child to count back from  numbers up to 20.


We hope you had a lovely restful half term break. When the children came into school on Monday they found a giant egg and some footprints around the classroom. It was very exciting! As the week progressed the children thought about what might be in the egg and the footprints moved over the week. When the children came in on Thursday they found that the egg had hatched and there was a beautiful dragon.  The children have used this 'awe and wonder' for a focus for their writing.

Adult Directed Learning has been focused on our Jigsaw programme. The Jigsaw topic is 'Healthy Me'- it is all about keeping healthy and looking after our bodies.  The children rotated around 4 activities including:



Exercise:

The children took part in an exercise circuit – They had to climb over the play park, going up the ladder and down the slide, zig zag between the chairs, jump through the  hoops, , hop across the grid and jump and hop across the hop scotch. They repeated this circuit several times during which we asked questions about how they were feeling.
Key questions:
Why is it important to exercise? What happens to our bodies after we exercise? Does anything change? How do they feel now? What changes have happened to our bodies?


 Healthy Eating:

The Teacher made a shopping list – sweets, cakes, crisps, coke, etc. Verbalising their thinking e.g. OOH! I love cake, and I love chocolate. They asked the children if this was a good shopping list.


 We then talked about food – how some is more healthy and we should mainly eat those foods and that some food is less healthy and we should eat those less often.
The children were each given a picture of food and they had to decide whether their food was healthy or unhealthy putting it next to the correct traffic light - green or red.
Key questions included:
Are we ever allowed to eat not so healthy foods? What does healthy food do to our bodies? If you ate less healthy food all the time what would happen to your body? We then talked about food wastage at snack and lunch time.

We also talked about the importance of drinking lots of water!

Sleep:
We had items hidden from the children:  dressing gown, teddy, hot water bottle, pyjamas & a story book. We revealed each item one at a time. We asked the children to identify what time of the day we use these items the most?
We Watched a clip Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang- Dad singing Hushaby Mountain


The children then took turns to say what they do before they go to sleep.



The Children then found a place to lie down and we played a lullaby and encouraged the children to close their eyes and take deep breaths. We explained to the children that when we are asleep our bodies grow and get healthy. Sleep is as important as eating healthy and exercise. At the end of the lullaby the children pretended to stretch and wake up, ready to start the day.



 Friends/being happy and kind:






We started by watching the following clip:

Watch:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/justins-house-good-friends. 
We played a musical friends game. When the music stopped the children had to find a partner – The teacher asked them a to tell their partner their favourite colour. This was repeated with a new partner – tell them your favourite food/animal. The next time the teacher gave each pair a picture about friends. The children had to talk to each other about the picture. What is happening? What would a good friend do? The pictures include things such as a child who has fallen over and has a sore knee, a child being left out, children fighting, children having fun, a messy classroom etc. This promoted discussion about how we could be a good friend. The children then passed Jenie (our jigsaw piece) around and gave examples of what makes a good friend.

We also spoke about stranger danger and keeping clean.


In maths this week we have been teaching the children to subtract.
Activity 1:
The children were asked to count out 7 unifix. Their friend then checked they had counted 7. The teacher said now take away 4/3/5/2. How many are left? Model the language, ‘7 take away 3 leaves 4’. This was repeated with other amounts of unifix continuing to model the language.
We then discussed how we could record this using a number sentence.
Activity 2:
Each child was given a double decker bus sheet. The teacher asked the children to take out 8 ‘people’ and put them on the bus. Children roll the dice and take away that number. They repeated this several times. The adult constantly reinforced the language used – 8 take away 4 is 4.

Activity 3:

Children each have a soft tens frame filled with red counters and a spinner

They rolled the spinner and took away that number of pieces. The children were encouraged to say ' I have 10 counters take away 2 leaves 8

Activity 4:

The children sang 'Five Little Ducks'.

The Teacher asked 'What is happening to the number of ducks every time?'

Each child was given a pond/island board. The teacher said  there were 9 ducks in the pond (everyone gets 9 ducks).

Children took a numbered lolly stick and took away that number

 How many are left? The teacher modelled language used 9 take away 3 is 6.

In phonics this week we introduced the diagraphs 'ai',  'ee' and the tri-graph 'igh'.   Focusing on reading for the first day and writing on the second day for each sound. See if your child can use their phoneme fingers or robot arms to sound out these words and their blending arm to blend them back together. 

Your child could then have a go at writing some of these words.


ai: sail, tail, rail, mail,
ee:  teeth,  three, tree, bee,
igh- light, high, right, tight, sigh, sight,


The children all listened to the Chinese story of how the years are named after the animals. In ChIL this week there have been lots of activities related to Chinese New Year. The children made lanterns and fans, they did Chinese writing, cutting out pictures of Chinese animals. They used stick puppets for retelling the Chinese story. The role play area has been set up as a Chinese restaurant where the children could write menus and dress up.

The children have really enjoyed playing outside despite the cold. They particularly enjoyed the new work bench where they have been hammering nails into wood.

The Robins enjoyed a skipping workshop this afternoon. The Ducks will be doing it next Friday.

We hope to see you at the Fair Trade Café next week.
Have a lovely weekend.
The Year R Team

Friday 9th February

Useful information and requests:

• Our Fairtrade café is on Thursday 1st of March. You are invited to join your child at our cafe to buy a fair trade drink and snack and we will sing you a song. The children will be making some chocolate krispies using fairtrade produce after half term. These will be on sale at the cafe.
• After half term please could we ask that the children's PE bags have jumpers and tracksuit bottoms removed as we do not need these at the moment (we are not going outside) and they are just extra things to get lost!
• Please ensure that all clothes are labelled as children often muddle up their clothes when they change for PE.
• Thanks for all the junk modelling- we have enough for at least the first week back!!

Things to do...

 

• Recap this weeks sounds-sh,  th and ng
• Ask your child to find 3D shapes in the environment. Can they name the shapes and describe them? Can they tell you the 3D rhyme they learnt at school (see below).
• Read with your child
• Have a really good rest!
  

This week three of our adult directed tasks were linked to our theme of 'Pirates' to inspire the children's learning. The children received a letter from Captain Mollie who wrote that she had been out in the stormy seas and lost her treasure and belongings. She  asked whether we could help her find it. The children  looked through all the items that had been found in our classroom and then had to think about how they were going to tell the Captain about what they had found. The children decided that they needed to send messages to her. They thought of different things they could write in their message:
 ·         A list of things we’ve found
 ·         A message to her
 ·         Describe an object
 ·         A question

 
The teacher then modelled how we could do this. 
Each child wrote a message- a  sentence, caption or drawing. We encouraged the children to use their phonics to help them write following our steps:




• say the word
• finger the word
• write the word.

The children then rolled up their messages and put them in bottles to send to Captain Mollie.

In the second pirate activity the children sat in a circle with the pirate ship and a pirate figure in the middle. They started by playing a game of 'where is the pirate?' The pirate was moved around and the children were encouraged to use positional language to describe where the pirate was (behind it, next to it, on top of, under. inside, beside, below....). The children were then taken on a  treasure hunt/ obstacle course and they had to continue to use the positional language to describe what they were doing. They tiptoed in between the planks, through the snake pit etc. Perhaps your child could describe what they were doing in the pictures below using positional language.  At the end of the treasure hunt they each found a chocolate gold coin which they were allowed to bring home on Friday.

Another  activity was based in the creative area, teaching the children how to make models with junk effectively and ensuring that the children think about the stages of model making.
 

We explained that they were going to using the junk to make a model to fit into our pirate topic.

We asked them: What could we make related to pirates? Treasure chest, ship, treasure island, sword, etc.

 

We explained that they needed to first  decide what model they were going to make.
Key questions:

How do you want it to look?

What resources will you need?

How are you going to join them together?

What techniques are you going to use?

What are you going to cover the boxes with?

How would you change it next time?

We demonstrated some joining techniques and asked the children to plan their models and explained that they would then make amendments as they went along and may also think of ways to improve their model further if they were to start again. We explained tp the children that these were the steps they needed to take every time they made a model.

 

 

The final adult directed activity was a maths activity with the focus of number formation for all numbers to 10. This consisted of a carousel of activities including:

• marble rolling in numbers,
• formation of numbers on a white board
• Number tracing with felt tips
• making number with 2 duplo pieces

In maths this week we have focused on learning 3d shapes. Your child needs to be able to name some simple 2d and 3d shapes e.g. cube, cylinder, sphere, cuboid and cone. 2d: square, triangle, rectangle and square.


The children rotated around four activities over the week.

At the beginning of every session we chanted a  3D shape song while holding the shapes:

Cube, cube, what’s your clue? - 6 square faces all over you

Cuboid, cuboid, what’s your clue? - You look like a tissue box achooo!

Cylinder, cylinder, what’s your clue? - You can stand up or roll about too

Sphere, sphere, what’s your clue? - You look like a ball that you kick with your shoe

Cone, cone, what’s your clue? - Don’t let your ice cream drip on you!
See if your child can chant it with you.

Activity 1: We explained that we were going on a shape hunt. We asked the children to find the shapes that were hidden outside and bring them back to the table and ‘sort’ them into the correct tray.

We extended the children by asking them to name and describe the shape using mathematical language. 

We told the children some shape riddles that they had to solve – I have 6 square faces what am I?

I am roll like a ball, what am I?

I have two circular faces, what am I?

Activity 2: The children were given a picture of a 2d shape and they had to fit as many spheres/cuboids/cones, cylinders into the shape as they could counting them.

 

Activity 3: The children were given a picture of  a tower/model made of 3d shapes and they had to use 3d shapes to copy the picture and then had to name the shapes they had used.

 

Activity 4: The children investigated how well the different 3d shapes would roll down a ramp.

In phonics this week we introduced the sounds 'sh',  'th' and 'ng'.   Focusing on reading for the first day and writing on the second day for each sound. See if your child can use their phoneme fingers or robot arms to sound out these words and their blending arm to blend them back together. 

Your child could then have a go at writing some of these words.


sh: fish, ship, shell, shed, shop, wish
th: thin, thick, tooth, teeth, moth, think, three
ng- bang, song, sing, ring, king, gong, long, ping-pong


The children found 'th' particularly difficult. We practised saying 'th' and 'f' demonstrating how the shape of our mouth changes. When we say 'th' we stick our tongue out slightly. When we say 'f' we rest out top teeth on our bottom lip. It would benefit you child greatly if you practised differentiating these sounds and words beginning with these sounds.













We also practised the formation of these letters:
s- is a curly caterpillar letter. Make a curve, up, down, down and tick
t- is a long ladder letter. Start at the top, down and curve, up, down and flick.
h- is a robot arm letter. Start at the top, down, down, bounce half way back up, over and down and flick.
n- is a one armed robot letter. Start at the top, down, bounce back up and over, down and flick.

g- is a curly caterpillar letter. make a curve, up, down, down and curl.



The children have had lots of fun in ChIL

We hope you have a lovely restful half term break! Make sure your child gets lots of sleep!
The Year R Team