Author: Mrs Wood

Nursery Rhyme Week
This week, we celebrated Nursery Rhyme Week! In Literacy, we read Each Peach, Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. We had so much fun carefully exploring the illustrations to spot all the different nursery rhyme characters hidden on each page.

On Wednesday, we looked at household objects from the past and the present. We talked about how they are similar and different.
This week’s chilli challenges were all linked to our nursery rhyme theme. Take a look at some of the wonderful learning in action…
Phonics
This week, we learnt four new graphemes: v, w, x, and y. The children are really enjoying their daily phonics sessions and are becoming super readers!

Help at home:
Practise reading the tricky words we’ve learnt so far. You could make it fun by playing a Tricky Word Hunt around your home. Hide the words and see how quickly your child can find and read them!

Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning statement this week is: I follow our school rules: We’re ready.
We have been exploring what it means to be ready – showing good looking, good listening, good sitting and good body language. The children are fantastic at being ready to learn – well done, Reception!

Help at home: Talk together about what being ready looks like at home. For example, being ready to help or being ready for school.

Reminder
Next Tuesday is our Maths Stay & Learn session for parents. Once the children are settled on the carpet, we’ll invite you into the classroom to watch a short maths session. After that, there’ll be a variety of maths challenges for you to enjoy with your child. To finish the session, I’ll deliver a short presentation all about maths in Reception. We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Literacy
On Tuesday, we talked about why we celebrate Bonfire Night and what people do to celebrate. We also thought about how to stay safe. Here’s some of the children’s Bonfire Night safety tips:

• Stand back from the bonfire.
• Hold sparklers far away from your body.
• Put a sparkler into a carrot to hold the carrot.
• Don’t put sparklers in the bin—put them in some water instead.
• Only adults should light fireworks.

Help at home: Make a Bonfire Night safety poster with your adult or older sibling.

We also talked about Remembrance Day and why people wear a red poppy. We watched a short animation called Poppies. It allowed us to see what life was like for animals during the war.

Here’s a look at some of the exciting challenges we completed to support our learning…
Maths
This week, we’ve been engaging in activities that highlight the purpose of counting – finding out how many objects there are altogether. We’ve reinforced our understanding of cardinality, recognising that the last number we say when counting represents the total number of objects in the set.

A key focus has been deepening our understanding of the number 5 as a quantity. We’ve been linking the number to familiar representations, such as the five fingers on one hand. The children are also beginning to explore different ways to represent numbers up to 5, using both their fingers and the Hungarian number pattern (die frame).

On Wednesday, the children worked in pairs to collect 5 objects and place them on the fingers of their hand template. They were challenged to find:

• 5 objects that are all the same
• 5 that are the same but in different colours,
• 5 that are the same but in different sizes

This activity sparked lots of discussion and teamwork as they compared, sorted, and explained their choices. We saw fantastic mathematical thinking and collaboration throughout the session!

Help at home: Draw a hand on a piece of paper and collect 5 objects. Can you do some of the challenges with did in school?

Important!
If your child likes to have grapes in their packed lunch, please make sure they are cut in half lengthways. This helps reduce the risk of choking. Thank you for helping us keep everyone safe!
Reminders

• Odd Socks Day – Monday 10 November
  Children are invited to wear odd socks to school today, marking the fact we’re all different in some way.
• Children in Need: non-uniform day – Friday 14 November
• Maths stay and learn session – Tuesday 18 November

Diwali
This week, we explored the story Binny’s Diwali. We talked about what a festival is and discussed the similarities between different religious festivals. The children had lots of fun learning how families prepare for and celebrate Diwali.
Help at home: Can your child remember something about Diwali? If they’re unsure, here’s some key words to help them: food, decorations, fireworks.

For our writing activity, the children designed their own invitations to a Diwali celebration. They included some fantastic drawings and used recognisable letters in their writing—well done, everyone!
What else have we been up to?
We’ve been getting creative by making our own magic potions! The children used their imaginations to come up with exciting ingredients and then wrote lists to describe what they added to their mixtures. Fantastic mark-making and early writing practice!
In the maths area, we practised 1:1 correspondence by counting pom poms to match numerals up to 10.
One-to-one correspondence focuses on the actual counting of objects, and assigning numbers to objects in the correct order, as they are counted. This also helps children to understand that the numbers they are saying hold value.

The playdough challenge has been very popular this week! The children have really enjoyed using their fine motor skills and creativity to make colourful Diya lamps.

Another popular chilli challenge involved drawing detailed Mehndi patterns, We observed some fantastic concentration and careful mark-making.
Yesterday, the children worked in pairs to design and create some beautiful Rangoli patterns.
Reminders

• Marvellous Maths Stay and Learn Session
  Tuesday 18 November
  Come and join us for a fun, hands-on maths learning experience!
• WOW Moments
  Have you noticed something special or a new interest at home?
  Send photos or updates to: [email protected]
  We love sharing these in class!
• Daily Reading
  It’s important that your child reads daily at home. Please continue to read eBooks to support phonics skills and their library book to support love of reading.

Have a happy and healthy week. See you on Monday 3rd November!

Autumn
We’ve had a busy week doing lots of seasonal activities. After reading Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, we looked closely at the beautiful leaf illustrations and used them as inspiration to talk about all the amazing changes we see in autumn.
We also began learning about hibernation and explored why some animals start to hibernate around October and November. We even made our own clay hedgehogs!
Help at home: Ask your child which animals hibernate and what they do to get ready for the colder months.

Maths
Our focus has been on using the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to compare groups of objects. Since we’re working with countable items, we use fewer rather than less.

Help at home: Gary and Barney are still arguing! Can your child help them out? Use this sentence to compare: “___ has more/fewer ___ than ___.”
(For example: Gary has more apples than Barney.)
Phonics
We’ve been busy recapping all the graphemes we’ve learned so far. There are no new graphemes or phonics sheets this week or next. Please continue to use the phonics home learning book.

Here’s a snapshot of some of this week’s seasonal chilli challenges…

Look at us – we’re artists!
We’ve been learning all about what an artist is. After reading Henri’s Scissors, we talked about the key events in Henri Matisse’s life. He loved to paint, but later in life he started making beautiful pictures using only scissors and paper!

We looked at Matisse’s bright and colourful artwork and shared what we liked (and didn’t like!) about it. Using our cutting skills, we made our own collages by cutting out different shapes and arranging them into creative designs. We had so much fun exploring colour, shape, and imagination—just like Matisse did!

Help at home: Practise your cutting skills.

 Phonics Superstars! 
The children are becoming real phonics superstars! Every morning, they eagerly help each other get their phonics packs out and ready to learn. We’re proud to share that we have now learned all of the Phase 2 phonemes for this half-term.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll be focusing on practising our blending skills and recapping all of the phonemes to strengthen our reading confidence. Well done, everyone!

Help at home: Use your phonics home learning book on a daily basis. Practise saying the pure sounds and writing the graphemes.

Look how we’re growing!
This week, we measured how tall we are.  Throughout the year in Reception, we’ll keep checking to see how much we’ve grown.
Home learning challenge

Reminders

• Water bottles: Please ensure your child brings a filled water bottle to school each day.
• Lost uniform: We’re seeing a lot of jumpers and cardigans go missing. Please label all clothing clearly with your child’s name to help us return lost items.

• Parent-Teacher Zoom Meetings: These are coming up soon. Don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already!

 

Thank you for coming to today’s phonics stay and learn session. I hope you found the session useful and went home feeling a bit more knowledgeable about Little Wandle and how we teach phonics in school. Your feedback is highly valued. We would appreciate it if you could complete the parent feedback form.

The  Little Wandle parent page has some useful videos on how to support your child’s reading at home. If you were unable to make the stay and learn session, click here to view the slides. Like always, if you have any questions, please ask me at the end of the day.

We look forward to seeing you again at the number stay and learn session on Tuesday 18th November.

 

Literacy
This week our focus was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We had lots of fun using the actions to retell the story. We even made our own binoculars and used them for our sensory bear hunt on Wednesday.
Help at home: The family came across some obstacles on their journey. Can your child remember them?

Maths
This week, we’ve explored 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’ is made up of smaller parts.
On Tuesday, we helped the three bears find collections of 3 things for their picnic. We used the stem sentence: 1 and 1 and 1 makes 3 each time we found a collection of 3 things.
Help at home: Can you make collections of objects at home? Remember the objects don’t always have to be the same!

Independent learning
Here’s a snapshot of some of the learning we’ve been doing in the areas of provision.
Home learning challenge

Reminders!

• Don’t forget to come to our Phase 2 phonics Stay & Learn and coffee morning on Monday 9am.
• Library books need to be returned every Tuesday.
• eBooks are assigned every Thursday. To celebrate your child’s reading skills, make sure you listen to your child read their eBook daily.
• Reading records and phonics home learning books need to be returned every Thursday.

You might be thinking what your child is doing at school on a regular basis. Here’s a snapshot of what a typical day might look like in Reception at Moortown Primary School. Maths
This week, we’ve focussed on perceptual subitising (recognising the number of objects without counting) up to 3. We’ve been learning how to use our fast eyes when looking at small sets of objects.
Help at home: Can you say how many conkers there are without counting?
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 for you to watch at home.
Here’s our first poem…
Every Friday, your child will bring a paper copy of the poem home for you to keep practising at home.

Reading practice
Reading daily at home is an essential part of your child’s reading journey. Click here to watch a useful video about how to use a wordless book at home with your child. If you have any issues logging onto Collins eBooks, please let me know. Please make sure your write in your child’s reading record and return it every Thursday.

 

Finally, thank you to all the parents/carers who attended the Reception welcome meeting on Tuesday. It was great to see so many of you. As always, if you have any questions or would like to share any home learning please use our Reception email [email protected].

We’ve had a fantastic week getting to know each other and our new routines. I’ve been super impressed with their fantastic listening skills and how good they already are at “3, 2, 1 stop”.
Morning drop off
Our cloakroom is very small and can feel very overwhelming. We want to make sure all our children feel safe and have a happy and healthy start to their school day. Therefore, from Monday, your child will line up in the playdough and come into the classroom independently. This will also allow a prompt start to learning and encourage independence. Please wait with your child in the playground until a member of the Reception team opens the gate.

Phonics
This week, we’ve started our phase 2 phonics sessions. We’ve been trying really hard to form the 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 the phonemes (The smallest unit of sound you can hear in a word. For example, ‘sat’ has three phonemes: ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’) correctly.

If you’re unsure on how to pronounce the phonemes, there are some really useful videos on the Little Wandle parent page.

Phonics home learning
Today, your child has come home with their first phonics home learning sheet and a phonics home learning book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please make sure you return your child’s phonics home learning book every Thursday so we can add new graphemes and tricky words.

PE
PE starts next Friday. Please make sure your child comes to school in their PE kit. Our Uniform policy has a really helpful PE kit guide if you need some help!

Families

I look forward to seeing you all at the second Welcome to Reception meeting on Monday at 6pm.

 

This week, we welcomed some of our Reception children. You all looked super smart in your new red uniforms and your shiny new school shoes! We’ve had a busy few days getting to know each other and exploring in the areas of provision. We’re looking forward to welcoming the rest of the children next week!

Reminder!
Don’t forget to attend our Welcome to Reception at 6pm on Monday 15 September. You’ll find out some basic ‘need to knows’ about life in Reception. They’ll also be a chance for you to ask any questions.

Reception email
Learning doesn’t just happen in school! Therefore, we love it when parents send in any ‘WOW’ moments. Please use the Reception email when sending in any photos.
[email protected]

Dates for your diary