Headteacher: Anna Moss

Hello Red Class,

Well, we’ve seen every type of weather in the outdoor area this week. A little bit of sunshine mixed with lots of wind and rain. It must be autumn! Thank you for keeping spare socks in your book bag to keep you warm and dry after soggy play sessions.

This week, we discovered s a t p in Phonics. We follow the Letters and Sounds programme of Phonics where we introduce a group of letters, sounds and keywords each week. We use songs, stories and actions to help the children to remember each sound as we know children learn in different ways. We always say the letter name and the sound as letter names will be useful for tricky spellings later on.

One of the games we enjoyed playing in Phonics this week was ‘Stand Up/ Sit Down’. It’s great for developing visual memory. To play this game at home, write s a t p on separate pieces of paper and choose one to be your special letter, so let’s say ‘s’. Flash each letter to your child but they should only stand up if they see your special letter. This game could be played with objects from home too e.g. stand up if you see a potato but sit down for the other food items.

The children enjoyed reading picture sentences today. We read ‘I’, ‘to’ and ‘the’ together and we popped them in sentences with pictures e.g. I love dogs. Jump to the moon. I added a full stop too so the children could see the end of the sentence. Look for the Friday Fanfare on Parent App to see the example sentences with pictures. 

It was time for ‘Circles and Eights’ in Write Dance. We drew circles and lazy eights (eights on the side) in shaving foam and created Write Dance butterflies. I think my favourite part of the week was seeing lots of pairs of legs making circles in the air. Watch this example video and you’ll see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFEZzcJRtVQ
Picture sentences help the children to build confidence and give them opportunities to rehearse a few keywords. Try making picture sentences with ‘I’, ‘to’ and ‘the’.

In Maths, we used a ten-frame (10 boxes in 2 rows of 5) treasure chest to make numbers in different ways. The children moved their pieces of treasure (beads) around the chest and described each pattern e.g. 3 on the top and 2 on the bottom. Activities like this help the children to understand numbers and to see number bonds.

Our focus rhyme this week was ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ and, as I was leaving for home today, it was lovely to hear a little group of children singing the rhyme as they worked in club. I hear there might have been some performances at home too! At the start of the week, we used a picture of the rhyme to support our reasoning and dialogue work. The children were great at naming objects/people in the picture and putting the clues together to find the rhyme. We used story mapping to remember the rhyme using simple pictures and arrows to sequence the events. Today, I watched a group of children, in play and explore, pretending to be teachers. One little group worked on one side of the easel retelling the rhyme with the pointing stick, another group worked on the other side reading their picture sentences while a third group made Write Dance butterflies at the creative table and that’s why I love teaching Reception! The children learn a new idea during their carpet work and then use their play and explore time to apply their learning.

Talking of butterflies, we’ve been talking about bees and butterflies today to help us to understand effective play behaviour. Butterflies like to flit from one activity to the other while bees take their time, persevere, sustain concentration and show resilience. We’re encouraging the children to be busy worker bees in Red Class.

Just a reminder, it’s Forest School next Friday. The children should wear their usual Blackwell jumper with jogging bottoms and trainers. Feel free to send in thick socks for toasty toes in the Forest.

Finally, please name all items of clothing. We teach the children to put their uniform in their PE bags when they change for PE and we change an extra item each week. So, last week we just swapped blue tops for white tops and this week we’re changing the bottom half. Wish us luck! However, it’s hard when you’re 4 or 5 to keep track of your jumper. I know a nearly 40 year-old who still finds it hard! If your child leaves an item of clothing in school, don’t worry, it’s usually on their peg and it will return in the week.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Lots of love,

Mrs Webb, Mrs Hampton, Mrs Dyson and Mrs Flynn xxx

P.S. You will find a home learning pack in your book bag tonight. Don’t worry, it’s not homework for the weekend. It’s a little pack to keep safe just in case we have any poorly children who need to learn at home.