Friday 10th November

This week the children enjoyed using their phoneme knowledge to write firework words. The children talked about fireworks they had seen at the weekend and we watched a clip of fireworks and talked about the sounds we could hear- 'whizz, bang, zoom, boom, wheeee, fizz, pop, crackle, shshshs, rrrrr, pppp, ccc, hushsh'. 
The children then worked with the teacher in a small group writing their words. The remainder of the group worked on cutting skills, firework pictures, colouring and practising words on a white board.

Link to fireworks: Fireworks

Here are some of the words the children wrote:

In order for the children to understand why we have fireworks on the 5th November we told them the story of Guy Fawkes.  We explained that we have fireworks and a bonfire on November the 5th to celebrate the fact that Guy Fawkes did not manage to blow up the King and the Houses of Parliament. 
We used pictures form the story to make a story board. 

The children then acted the story out as we retold it. We asked them questions such as: Who is the main character in the story? What other characters are there? How does the story start? What happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story? Is this book a fiction/story book or an information book? Perhaps you could ask your child some of these questions.


The children have also focused on handwriting skills this week. We are now following the Penpals handwriting scheme. There are four letter families - one armed robot letters, long ladder letters, curly caterpillar letters and zig zag monster. 

This week we focused on some of the curly caterpillar letters. The children practised forming each letter in the air and on the floor and on each others backs. As they formed the letters we said the phrase:
c-follow the curve
a-make a curve, go up to the top, come back down and flick.
o-make a curve all the way round.
d- make a curve go all the way up, come back down and flick.

The children worked in a small group with an adult to ensure their formation was correct while the rest of the children completed other fine-motor activities.



Robins and Ducks continued their creative work based on Gail Bartel this week. She is an artist who paints natural objects using a variety of techniques. We looked at an example of her work and discussed what tools she may have used and how she made her picture. We demonstrated how we were going to make the trunk of the tree using ink and a straw, blowing it with the straw to spread the ink across the page. The children then used a variety of objects to print the leaves using Autumn colours to do this.

Here is some of their work:

We have had five maths activities this week. These have all focused on the number 6. The children started each maths session by listening and counting patterns made with instruments. They have completed counting activities where they need to find the pictures of 6 things. They went on a hunt sorting items into the correct hoop. Each time the children added an item to the hoop we checked the number of items and talked about how many more we needed to get to 6. We also compared the number of items in each hoop using language such as more/fewer. The children also looked at patterns on dominoes and sorted the dominoes into those with 6 dots. The final activity was a game. The children sat in a circle rolling a large dice. They had to shout out the number they rolled. They took turns to roll and if they rolled a 6 they had to jump up and run around the circle back to their place.They loved playing this!

This week in phonics the children have focused on the phonemes: n,m,d,and g 
Ask your child whether they can use their phoneme fingers to sound out the words and blend them back together. These are some of the words they have been learning: net, pin, Mum, mug, mat, mop, dog, dig, dug, Dad, grab, get, ..



In ChIL this week the children have continued to paint their Diva lamps.

Photos of ChIL

What you can do with your child....

• Practise this weeks letters and recap last weeks: s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d,g,
• Count 6, ask how many more are needed to make 6. 
• play board games

Reminders...

If you ordered Christmas cards from APFS they will be sent home next week. Please let Mrs Parkin know if there are any items missing.

Next Friday is Children in Need. The children have to bring in a bear covered in spots in return for a donation of £1.


Warning: Friday 24th November is an Occasional Day and School will be closed.

Have a lovely weekend.
The Year R Team

Friday 3rd November

We hope you all had a lovely half term break.

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 learnt to form their letters in their name correctly. It is very important that the children start their name with a capital letter and use lower case letters for the rest of their name. Some children have been writing their name in capitals, please encourage them to write them correctly. While the children worked in small groups with the teacher the other children developed their fine motor control with handwriting patterns, colouring and letter formation in sand and glitter trays.

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