This week, we’re throwing bibs into the air to help support our object control skills. This fun activity is helping us develop our throwing skills, coordination and control as we watch the bib in the air.
This photo is a fantastic snapshot of all the children joining in, giving it a go and enjoying being active. Well done, everyone!
Take a look at our Autumn 2 overview to find out all the exciting things our Reception children will be learning, exploring and discovering this half-term.
We’ve come to the end of our first half-term in Reception! It’s been a fantastic first half-term, full of exciting learning, new experiences and lots of fun. I’m sure the children are looking forward to a well-deserved break before we begin Autumn 2.
This week, the children have been busy taking part in our Rainbow Challenges. Here’s a little snapshot of some of the wonderful learning and activities they’ve been enjoying:
Building bridges to help the Superveggies escape from the Evil Pea.
Using our good drawing skills to design our own Superveggies.
Continuing repeating patterns in the maths area.
Making magic potions in the water area.
Painting pumpkins using our observational skills to look carefully at their shapes, colours and details.
Exploring the inside of pumpkins!
Top tip for parents
Please remember to keep your child’s reading record in their book bag every day. Occasionally, we may need to write in it on a different day.
We hope everyone enjoys a restful half-term break, and we look forward to welcoming the children back for more exciting learning in Autumn 2!
This week, we’ve really enjoyed immersing ourselves in the story of Supertato! The Evil Pea escaped from the freezer again, but luckily, we’ve been busy creating our own traps in the creative area to help protect our classroom.
We’ve also been busy making magic potions in our outdoor kitchen to stop the Evil Pea from causing any more mischief!
We’ll be continuing our Supertato adventures next week.
Maths
Every day in maths, we explore prepositional language. We use actions to help us understand and remember each of the prepositional words we’ve been learning this half-term.
Help at home: Play hide a seek with a soft toy. Use the actions to describe where the soft toy is.
Phonics
We’re so proud to share that’ve we’ve finished learning all of the Phase 2 phonemes for this half-term! Next week, we’ll focus on practising our blending skills and recapping all the phonemes. Well done, everyone!
Help at home: Please use your child’s phonics home learning book daily. Practise saying the pure sounds and writing the corresponding graphemes to help reinforce their learning.
Literacy
This week, we’ve been using our clear talking voices to retell We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Yesterday, we had lots of fun going on our very own sensory bear hunt! We made sure to use words and phrases from the story as we made our way through each of the obstacles.
Phonics superstars!
The children are becoming more and more confident during our phonics sessions. Every day, they eagerly help each other get their phonics packs out and ready to learn. We’re so proud of their enthusiasm! Next week, we’ll be learning the final four phonemes for this half-term: h, b, f and l.
Help at home: Continue to use the phonics home learning book and sheets at home.
Rainbow challenges
This week, the children’s rainbow tick sheets have been filling up with ticks! They’ve been busy getting stuck into all of the challenges. From building bear caves in the construction area to playing subitising bingo in the maths area, we’ve seen some wonderful independent learning.
Reminders
Literacy
For the next two weeks, our focus is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We’ve been using a story map to help us retell the story and remember the different parts in the correct order.
Make sure you look out for a video of us retelling the story next week!
Help at home: Use the story map sheet to practise retelling the story together.
Maths
This week, we’ve been exploring how numbers can be composed of 1s. Throughout the week, we’ve been collecting groups of 2, 3 and 4 objects to help us understand that a whole can be made up of smaller parts.
On Tuesday, we helped the three bears find collections of 3 things for their picnic. Each time we found a collection of 3, we used the stem sentence:
“1 and 1 and 1 makes 3.”
Help at home: Can you make collections of objects at home? Remember, the objects don’t always have to be the same!
Art
This half-term, our featured artist is Frida Kahlo. We’ve looked at examples of her artwork and talked about the shapes and colours, how the paintings make us feel and what we like about her pieces of artwork.
Over the past two weeks, the children have created their own wonderful self-portraits inspired by Frida Kahlo.
Living & Learning
Throughout the week, we’ve been talking about what a good listener looks like and why being a good listener is important.
Here are some of the children’s quotes:
Ol: I’m a good listener when I’m in the car because I need to keep my seatbelt on.
Lo: I’m a good listener when I’m talking to my friends.
Ai: I’m a good listener when I listen to my Daddy at home.
El: I listen to my Mummy and Daddy when I clean my teeth and get ready for school.
Za: I’m a good listener when Mummy and Daddy call me for my food.
Finally, here’s a snapshot of some of our fantastic independent learning this week.
Reminders!
Thank you to all the parents and carers who attended this morning’s Fine Motor Stay and Learn session. It was fantastic to see so many of you getting involved in the challenges and ticking them off on your sheets with your child. If you would like to revisit the presentation, you can take a look here.
Key points to remember
Rainbow challenges
This week, the children have really started to enjoy completing their independent rainbow challenges during choosing time.
Each week, there’ll be seven challenges across different areas of learning. The children are encouraged to complete the challenges independently and tick them off on their rainbow challenge card.
When your child completes a challenge, they’ll be encouraged to explain or show an adult what they’ve done. This helps us develop their confidence, independence and ability to talk about their learning.
Help at home: Ask your child if they’ve had a go at any of the rainbow challenges this week. Can they tell you what they did?
Daily movement (PE)
We’ve really enjoyed our daily movement sessions this week! We have been practising lots of different movements: running, balancing, rolling and crawling.
These activities are important for developing our core strength and gross motor skills, which provide an important foundation for later writing and fine motor control. Movement also supports our physical health and wellbeing, helping us to be happy and healthy learners.
Help at home: Have a go at crawling around a room together. Can you crawl forwards, backwards or around obstacles?
Maths
This week in maths, we’ve been exploring the purpose of counting – finding out “how many?” objects there are. We discovered that we can count all sorts of things, including sounds. We’ve also been practising our counting sequence by singing “1, 2, 3, 4, 5”.
Help at home: Look for opportunities to count together at home. You could count toys, steps, pieces of fruit or even sounds such as claps or taps!
Stay & Learn
We’re very excited about our first Stay & Learn session on Tuesday!
The focus will be on fine motor control and early writing. You’ll have the opportunity to take part in some fun fine motor challenges alongside your child before joining us for a short presentation.
We hope you leave the session with a better understanding of the learning that takes place in Reception and some ideas about how you can support your child’s learning and development at home.
We look forward to seeing you there! Have a happy and healthy weekend.
We’ve had a busy week in Reception! The child have coped really well with all of the carpet sessions. They’ve shown some fantastic listening skills and have been ready to learn during all of our carpet sessions.
Phonics
This week, we’ve started our Phase 2 phonics sessions. We’ve been working really hard to form our graphemes (a ‘symbol’ of a phoneme –it’s a letter or group of letters representing a sound and we use the letter names for this) and pronounce our phonemes (The smallest unit of sound you can hear in a word.) correctly.
For example, the word sat has three phonemes: s – a – t.
If you’re unsure how to pronounce the phonemes, there are some really useful videos on the Little Wandle Parent Page.
Help at home: Today, your child has come home with their first phonics home learning sheet. Please use this sheet alongside their phonics home learning book.
Poetry Basket
Every week, we’ll learn a new poem. Throughout the week, we’ll rehearse it, practise the actions and talk about the poem. On Fridays, we’ll perform our poem and Mr Wilks will post the video for you to watch at home
Help at home: Every Friday, your child will bring a paper copy of the poem home for you to keep practising at home.
Thank you to all of the parents and carers who were able to attend our Welcome to Reception – Part Two presentation yesterday. We hope you found the session useful. As always, please ask one of the Reception if you are unsure about anything.
Thank you for your continued support!