Welcome back following our Christmas break. Thank you so much for our lovely cards and gifts.

Phonics

Over the next week we will be assessing children's knowledge of their phase 2 phonics. This will help us to know how much children have understood and identify any gaps in their learning so far and plan for this moving forwards. Children who are secure in Phase 2 will be introduced to Phase 3 phonics.

Mathematical Development

We will continue to develop our subitising skills by identifying smaller amounts within a larger amount enabling us to learn about the composition of numbers. We will then be using five frames to give us another visual strategy for our number recognition and introducing digits alongside this. Once children are secure with the images and five frames, we introduce ten frames.

We continue to talk about concepts such as 'time,' 'measures' and positional language as and when teachable moments arise making this learning meaningful.

Seasonal Changes

Over this term the children have had the opportunity to learn about the seasons and changes. They discovered ice outside in the garden following a frosty night and then explored how to melt ice and how to create ice. We froze objects inside the ice and worked out ways to release them. The children learned lots of new vocabulary e.g. melt, freeze, frozen.

As part of our maths learning, we have our own classroom calendar showing the months of the year and everyone's birthday. We also have a monthly calendar. This really impacts on the children's understanding of time. K recently said "It's springtime today which means it's my birthday in six days."  T said "Look at the calendar it's two more sleeps until red nose day." Then L said "It will be M's birthday on the next day."

We have frogspawn in the classroom. The children have observed how the frogspawn has changed and we now have tadpoles. We wonder what's going to happen next?!

Children's Mental Health Week

We incorporated lots of ideas to introduce children to how we can be kind to not only each other but ourselves. We learnt new skills such as dragon breathing. We made a new area in our classroom to support our Zones of Regulation to help us identify our feelings and strategies to manage these.

We listened to relaxing music and shared stories such as 'I love me' which is about self-affirmations and 'Meesha makes friends.'

We spoke about the importance of being in nature during our woodland learning session that week.

We finished the week with our very own spa day.

Phonics

This term we have groups revisiting phase 2 to work on their confidence in blending and segmenting skills. We also have a phase 3 group. We have uploaded videos that are relevant to your child onto tapestry so you can help support their learning at home.

Drawing Club

Reception have started a new adventure this term. We have introduced ‘Drawing Club.’

Drawing club can be linked to well-known stories, cartoon clips and traditional tales. We focus on one each week and introduce this to the children as well as some new vocabulary to help support children’s language development. It also links into our Tales Toolkit work as we consider the character, setting, problem and solutions. We delve into our imaginations and use our fine motor skills to create our own drawings and even magical passcodes that can make all sorts of things happen! Already, we have seen the children learn new vocabulary and bring this into their own play and storytelling.

World Book Day

This year all children made headbands linked to their favourite stories. We focused on stories linked to our woodland learning e.g. The Gruffalo and Leaf Man.

We loved having our parents join us to read stories to us in the afternoon. Some of the older children also came to read to us.

Parents Cafe

We have undertaken training with EY Maths Consultant Karen Wilding. She has many videos on Youtube to share these approaches. They can be found here; https://www.youtube.com/@karenwildingeymaths

This half term we wanted to share with parents more about our subitising and maths teaching. Parents joined us for a session where Miss Turner firstly introduced the concepts behind the methods and then we went into the classroom to join the children in some maths activities. All the children were given a maths pack to help with learning at home too.

Wolsey Theatre Performance - The Hare and the Tortoise

We enjoyed a performance of the traditional tale 'The Hare and the Tortoise.' The children were engaged by the acting and the musical element of the show. It linked well with our focus on seasonal changes and also friendships and kindness.

Comic Relief

Children came to school wearing red clothes or pyjamas. We learnt about 'charity' and helping others and our school raised £164.

Google Earth

We have made resources for the children to use in their play which are photos of their houses on wooden blocks. This led us to explore maps and google earth. We found our school and talked about what we could see and the geogrpahical features. Then we looked for our houses and talked about our journey to school and made our own maps.

Pizza Making

Cooking always provides so many learning opportunities including new vocabulary, measuring, tasting new things and using tools safely such as knives.

We made mini pizza at school. We thought about the ingredients and did some shared writing of these. Then we chopped the vegetables and assembled the toppings before they went into the oven. Our classroom smelled amazing and they tasted delicious. 

Make your own pizza

You will need

Half a bread roll

Tomato pizza topping sauce

Peppers

Sweetcorn

Cheese

(You could explore other toppings at home e.g. chicken/pepperoni/tuna)