Friday 1st October

• Requests and reminders:
• Thank you so much for your patience when collecting the children. We still find it very difficult to recognise you with your masks on! So sorry about that!
• Please could you make sure your child brings in a coat to school as it is getting colder. As you can imagine in this current time we have to have all the doors and windows open so even indoors is cold! Vests or thermals would also be a good idea. 
• Don't forget individual photos are on Monday.
  

Things to do...
• You will notice that your child has come home with their 'Home school book' today. You will find lots of useful information in these books. Please take your time to read through them. There is a place to record your child's reading books. This is for your own record. There is also a communication section where you can write messages to us. We check for messages on a Wednesday (so don't write anything important in here that requires an immediate response). It is essential that your child's Home school book remains in their book bag so that we can write in it if we need to send you a message. It would be very helpful if you could cover the book in sticky back plastic or place it in a small plastic wallet. Children often put their water bottles in their book bags and reading books and home school books are ruined!
• We have also given your child a 'Pink' reading book. Please talk to your child about the title and it is important that they understand that we read the book from the front to the back. There may be some blurb on the back to share that you can read together. Look through the pages with your child and talk about the pictures. Pink books include a lot of repetitive text and words that can be worked out from the picture clues as well as some key words that cannot be sounded out and have to be learnt. Show your child how some of the words are the same on each page and therefore the words are repeated. Some children may identify the initial sound of words that match the picture clues. For example it may say 'This is a red car' and the next page may say 'This is a blue car'. encourage your child to use the picture clue and initial sound for the colour. There is also a sticker in your child's home school book explaining what is expected. Your child will be reading in a group 'guided reading' where we will teach them these reading skills.  As your child's knowledge of phonemes increases and they are able to recognise the letters and say the sounds and learn to blend them together, they will be moved onto red books. Please enjoy the book together.
• As your child is now bringing a reading book home please can you return the other books you have borrowed from school, returning them to the baskets which we will leave out next week.
• Read to your child everyday. Talk about rhyming words. 
• Sing nursery rhymes with your child. Here are some examples:  
• Play maths games with dice   
• Count everything. For example: ask them to lay the table with 4 forks, 4 knives etc, point out numbers and shapes in the environment.
• Recap the phonics activities your child completed this week. See below.
• Talk about the number 3.

Thank you for dressing your child with some green today. It was wonderful to still be able to make some money for Macmillan even though we couldn't have a cake sale.  Thank you so much for all your generous donations for this worthy cause. Here they are in their green!!

Finger strong/Guided writing

Each morning the children are starting the day with finger strong activities, helping them to prepare to be writers. Over the week they rotate around 5 activities. These included cutting skills, mark making, handwriting patterns, threading and peg boards.

 In maths this week we have focused on the number 3. The children learnt about triangles. They made patterns with triangles and talked about the properties of a triangle- it has 3 sides and 3 corners. They used the Numicon to make 3 in different ways. They had to cover a whole Numicon board with lots of ways to make 3.  The children also counted 3, collecting 3 items from around the classroom and learning that three is always 3 even when the objects move position. The children practised formation of number 3. They also had to identify triangles colouring triangles on a sheet made up of different shapes. They had to explain to the teacher how they knew a triangle was a triangle!

ChIL- the children have explored inside and outside in ChIL this week. They have loved playing with the mud kitchen and playing with the play dough. They are continuing to develop friendships and have settled very well.

In phonics this week the children have played the following games. You could have a go with your child at home.

Activity 1: Describe and find it

Have some farm animals. Describe one of the animals but do not tell the children its name. Say, for example: This animal has horns, four legs and a tail. Ask them to say which animal it is. Ask them to make the noise the animal might make. When they are familiar with the game let your child take the part of the adult and describe the animal for you to name. This activity can be repeated with other sets of objects such as zoo animals, toy sets based on transport (e.g. aeroplane, car, train, bus, boat) and musical instruments. It can be made more challenging by introducing sets of random objects to describe and name.

Activity 2  Chain games

Make a long sound with your voice, varying the pitch (e.g. ee, oo, ar, sh. Your child os to repeat the sound in the exact same way you made it.  Change roles after a couple of times.

Activity 3: Circle time names

Chant the song –

Some names are short,

Some names are long,

Please tell us your name after this song

Take it in turns to identify the beats (syllables) in the name by clapping, stamping, jumping, tapping. You could use names of friends and family too.

Activity 4: I spy

Place on the floor or on a table a selection of objects with names containing two or three phonemes (e.g. zip, hat, comb, cup, chain, boat, tap, ball). Check that your child knows the names of the objects. Have a soft toy that can only talk in robot speak.  The toy says I spy with my little eye a z-i-p. Then invite a child to say the name of the object and hold it up. Encourage your child to blend them together ‘z-i-p, zip’. When your child has become familiar with this game use objects with names that start with the same initial phoneme (e.g. cat, cap, cup, cot, comb, kite). This will really encourage the children to listen and then blend right through the word, rather than relying on the initial sound.

Activity 5: Sing:

The bat and the cat (tune: Farmers in the dell)

The bat and cat are fat, the bat and cat are fat AEIOU, the bat and cat are fat

The pet I met got wet …

The pin and bin are tin …

The drum and plum are glum …

Emphasise the rhyming words in the song.

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Year R Team