Friday Fanfare 9.10.20
9.10.20
Hello Red Class Families,
Now we’re super speedy in the mornings (this changes a few hours later), we’re completing name writing activities as part of the morning routine. We teach the children to use cursive letters starting from the line and focus on the letters in their name. We also encourage them to hold their pencil with a tripod grip. If you have a few minutes for name writing, we would really appreciate it. We can talk about how to support letter formation for name writing during parent consultations.
This morning, we made journey bracelets using natural materials at Forest School. Encouraging the children to collect leaves and seeds from the forest floor, provided a good starting point to talk about the forest. Around the fire circle, we shared the story of ‘Grandfather Oak and the Little Acorn’ and this inspired us to look for oak trees during play and explore time. We finished the session with a drink, snack and reflection time where we talked about our learning at Forest School.
We read words with g, o, c and k this week. The children were very good at using their spelling robots to spell words using these sounds too. We use special robot cards in school where the children add letters to their robot’s teeth to make words. We move our arms like a robot (one movement for each sound) to help segment the letter sounds in each word. We also like a game called ‘Draw it’ where we read a word on the board together e.g. ‘cat’ and then draw a picture to match. You can try this game at home using the letter sounds covered so far.
To match our robots in Phonics, we discovered the Write Dance robot this week. We danced like a robot making straight lines in the air horizontally and vertically and moved around the carpet like a robot too. The robot dance helps us to develop co-ordination as we move both hands at the same time but in opposite directions. At the end of the week, we created a robot head. You can watch the example video for the robot here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHMsJkiZbmY
We will continue with our robot work next week where we’ll add his body, arms and legs.
A couple of weeks ago, we handed out our self-isolation home learning packs. Unfortunately, the link I provided for Jolly Phonics songs has been removed from You Tube. Please use this link to practise the actions and songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTqfptkcpcY
In Maths, we used our comparing skills to see if Grandad had ‘more’ or ‘fewer’ cakes than his friends and we used our cake cards to begin to find 1 more and 1 less. We continued to work on positional and directional language through games such as ‘Simon Says’ and through cross-curricular activities. For example, in PE, we worked around an obstacle course moving under, over, on top, between and around a range of equipment.
We also count every day at school. At the moment, we’re reinforcing numbers 0-10, but we do extend learning, where necessary, in play and explore time and through routine activities, for example, counting all the children at Forest School.
I look forward to speaking to you next week for parent consultations. Have a happy weekend.
Mrs Webb, Mrs Hampton, Mrs Dyson and Mrs Flynn xxx