Author: Mrs Wood

Thanks to everyone who came to the phonics mornings last week. We hope you found them useful. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

In Phase 2 of our phonics programme (Letters and Sounds), children will be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll. We use Jolly Phonics actions to help children remember these phonemes. Each week the children will bring a set of letters home to learn. Please practise these every day and keep them in their book bag for us to add to.
Your child will be taught how to pronounce the phonemes correctly to make blending easier.
Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible. (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’).

Set 1: s a t p
Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k
Set 4: ck (as in duck) e u r
Set 5: h b l

We will begin learning ‘tricky words’ this week which are words which are not phonetic. Please help your child to read these by recognition. The first tricky words are the and to which we will be sending home for the children to learn.

Now the children have knowledge of some letters and their sounds, try to encourage them to write words independently. This might just be the initial sound of a word. Let them write something important to them. This could be a label for their drawing, a list or a letter to a friend.

Don’t forget to attend one of our phonics lessons this week.

Please join us on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning to see your children learn and find out how you can support them at home.

Don’t worry if you haven’t signed up yet – just come along!
See you there!

Our maths learning this week has been all about measuring. The children have been comparing the length and height of objects such as sticks, playdough worms, pencils and each other!

  

Home challenge
Ask your child to build a tower of five blocks and a tower of 9 blocks. Can they build a tower shorter than one but taller than the other?

 

What is Numicon? How do we subitise?

For answers to these important questions and more…don’t forget to attend our maths workshop on Monday.

Learn all about how we teach maths in Reception and how you can help at home.

See you there!

This week we have been investigating, describing and naming 2D shapes.

  

Why not encourage your child to go on a  shape hunt at home?

The children have been learning all about the number one by investigating and using one in a variety of situations:

• as the answer to ‘how many?’
• one is an amount
• one is a quantity
• first means position one
• once means one time

We have been encouraging the children to use a sentence stem to talk about a single unit, e.g. “I can see one apple.”

Don’t forget our workshop on Wednesday at 2.15 and 6.00.

Would you like to learn about phonemes, graphemes, split digraphs and more?

Find out how you can support your child at home with reading and writing.

Don’t worry if you haven’t returned a slip – just come along!

See you there!

We’ve been busy copying and making patterns this week. Recent research has found that young children’s ability to spot mathematical patterns can predict later mathematical achievement.

 

Copying patterns is important as it helps children to focus on ‘What is the same and what is different?’

Why not encourage your child to spot patterns around them? They could have a go at copying repeating patterns and making their own.

The children have shown a keen interest in our outside garden area.

As part of our maths learning this week, we counted the bulbs and planted them in rows of five.

We picked our ripe cherry tomatoes and shared them at snack time.

  

Our first workshop will be held on Thursday at 2.15 and 6.00.

We recognise that as parents you are your child’s first and most enduring educator. We value the contribution you make in your child’s learning journey and encourage you to share your unique knowledge of your child.

This helps us to establish an interesting and stimulating learning environment and activities for each child.

Our workshop will provide you with information to help you support your child at home and an insight into the teaching and learning that takes place over the Reception year.

We hope to see you all there.