The children have rotated around four adult directed activities over the week. After the activity the children have then had a focused ChIL in order to extend their learning in the area in which they have been working. They have also had phonics and maths lessons each day.
All the children have enjoyed an Autumn Walk. They were nature detectives looking for signs of Autumn. They were encouraged to use their senses. We asked them: 'What can you hear/smell/see?' They compared Autumn to the other seasons and discussed how animals prepare for winter and hibernation. We thought of lots of words to describe the signs of Autumn- we looked at conker shells (spiky) , fir cones (bumpy), different leaves. The children collected some signs of Autumn on a piece of sticky tape.
The children went down to the Robin Hood trail and used Autumn colours for wool winding on twigs. They had to concentrate hard to wind their wool carefully, without leaving spaces. The children really enjoyed having ChIL in the Robin Hood area. They collected Autumn leaves and made pictures and made a huge pile of leaves. They drew leaves and made rubbings of the bark and leaves.
The children have also been printing this week. They used Autumn colours to print using a range of shapes. They made a handprint for the trunk. Next week they will be making an Autumn tree in the styles of Gail Bartel using the techniques they were taught this week.
In phonics we have been recapping the phonemes a,t,p and i. The children are becoming much more confident at using their phoneme fingers and blending arm and have started to use their robot arms. See if they can demonstrate for you.
In maths this week the children worked in groups of 15, rotating around the activities over the week. They have been focusing on the number 5. They used multilink to make 5 in different ways. Some of the children were able to use a systematic pattern to find all possibilities. Others focused on counting 5.
The children have been introduced to part-part -whole. Where they have a number at the top and make the amount by separating the whole into two parts. The children did this practically using counters and then started to record this by using dots.
One of the activities was a weighing activity during this the children had to balance objects against a 5 piece of numicon. We talked about the fact that when you put something in one side of the scales the bucket will go down because it is heavier than the empty bucket.
The final maths activity was comparing lengths of animals. The children made a length of 5 linking animals. They then made a length of 5 different animals and used language including longest/ shortest to describe and compare their lengths.
ChIL- The children have played both inside and outside this week. They have continued with some of the adult directed activities independently. The children are now having 'rolling snack' which means they help themselves to their milk and snack during ChIL. We do remind them several times!
The children have started to paint their diva lamps.
We hope you have fun if you are going to see the fireworks this weekend. The Crabtree Fireworks are brilliant! Next week we will be talking about the noises the fireworks make and having a go at writing some of them.
Things you could do at home:
- Read with your child. Remember to talk through the book looking at the pictures first and look at key words together.
- See if your child can sound out (using their phoneme fingers) and blend words back together. Try pan, pig, pot, pop, pin. sit, sat, sun, stop, pat, tip, top, tap, net, in, not, ant
- Practise counting objects 1:1 accurately. Talk about the numbers 1-5, identify them in the environment and see if your child can tell you what 2 numbers can be used to make the numbers. Can your child say what 2 parts make the whole number?
If you have any dried food such as rice, lentils, pasta that has gone out of date we would be very grateful if we could have it.
Have a wonderful weekend.
The Year R Team
