Building!
There was great excitement this week when our new building blocks arrived. We definitely have some budding engineers in our class! Take a look at some of the fantastic construction that went on.
Block play is beneficial in Reception for a variety of reasons including:
- exploring mathematical concepts such as shape, size, length, weight and symmetry.
- investigating science concepts, including gravity, balance, stability and cause and effect.
- language and vocabulary are increased.
- children’s confidence in decision making is enhanced.
- coordination develops so eyes and hands and small and large muscles work together. This prepares children for success in reading and writing.
And of course, it’s fun!
Outdoor learning in Reception
The children spend a lot of time learning outside in Reception.
The following information about the importance of being outside is taken from the revised curriculum for the Foundation Stage:
- Being outdoors has a positive impact on children’s sense of well-being and this has an impact on all aspects of children’s development.
- Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things differently and on a different scale than when learning indoors.
- It gives children first hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world.
- Outdoor environments offer children freedom to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant.
Look at some of the things we have been doing outside.
We’ll be outside all winter, so please ensure your child has suitable clothing. Wellington boots are a good idea!
How to read ‘tricky words’.
The children are learning their letters and sounds quickly. They are beginning to blend them together to read and segment to spell.
This week we will be introducing ‘tricky words’.
These are everyday words that have tricky spellings and can’t be read by blending. Imagine trying to read the word said or does by blending each letter! These words just have to be learned by sight and flashcard-type games are a good way to practise these. We will be sending these tricky words home to learn.
Remember to say the sounds correctly
This is really important when you are helping your child to learn their letter sounds. Just remember not to add an uh to the end of the consonant sounds – so say mmm not muh, lll not luh, etc.
Go to www.oxfordowl.co.uk to see videos of all the sounds being pronounced. This website also contains games and ideas to help your child with their reading and free eBooks to download.
Reception won the Cool Class Cup!
We are very proud to have won the cup this week.
All the staff in school give Cool Class Tokens to children for such things as manners, behaviour and effort. These tokens are collected and counted at the end of each week. The class with the most tokens wins the cup which is awarded in our Good Work Assembly on Friday.
Learning to write
In Reception we are continuing to learn letters and sounds. As they learn each letter, the children will be shown how to write the ‘grapheme’ (a way of writing down a sound or phoneme; graphemes can be made up of one letter like ‘p’ and ‘s’, two letters like ‘sh’ and ‘th’, three letters like ‘tch’ in a word like ‘catch’ or four letters like ‘ough’ in ‘dough’ or ‘cough’, where the same grapheme is used to represent two different sounds). You can download a guide to how we form our letters in the Help Your Child section on this website.
Remember that children need lots of practice with different activities to develop the muscles necessary for writing. When the muscles of the hand are weak, or when the fingers have not learnt to work together well, the child often compensates by using a poor or faulty pencil grip.
Here are some fun things to try at home to help your child develop these essential muscles:
Using an egg box, have your child hold 6-10 beans in their hand, and place them into the container one by one. Write a number inside each hole and ask your child to add the correct number of beans. This is also a great way to reinforce the concept of number. You could also have a race to see who can put five beans into each hole in the fastest time! The important thing is to do it one bean at a time.
Give your child a few coins to hold and ask them to push them one at a time through the slot in a money box. Make sure the coins are placed with the tips of the fingers, not the sides of the fingers.
Using Play Dough is great exercise for the fingers – try squashing, rolling, pounding and moulding with the hands, without using any cutters or other traditional Play Dough toys.
Other activities may include cutting with scissors, doing up buttons, tearing paper and picking up the pieces. Let your child help with the washing up and wring out the dishcloth!
New SEAL theme – Getting on
The SEAL theme Getting On covers four main aspects:
- developing the social skills of friendship
- working well together in a group
- managing anger
- resolving conflict
Group work takes place across all lessons and even at lunchtime and playtimes. Some questions for children to consider are:
- Did everyone take turns?
- Did everyone listen to what other people thought?
- Did each person have chance to tell the group what they thought?
- If people had different ideas could the group reach a compromise?
The key areas of learning throughout this theme are empathy, managing feelings and social skills.
Within this theme is Antibullying Week, 19 November – 23 November.
Outdoor maths
The children are learning to recognise and write numerals whilst playing skittles.
Phase 2 Phonics
This week, we’ll begin Phase 2 of Letters and Sounds. In this phase, children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also be taught:
- the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes),
- which phoneme is represented by which grapheme, and
- that a single phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll.
They will be using pictures and hand movements to help them remember these.
VC and CVC words
C and V are abbreviations for ‘consonant’ and ‘vowel’. VC words are words consisting of a vowel then a consonant (e.g. am, at, it) and CVC words are words consisting of a consonant then a vowel then a consonant (e.g. cat, rug, sun). Words such as tick and bell also count as CVC words – although they have four letters, they have only three sounds. For example, in the word bell, b = consonant, e = vowel, ll = consonant.
Now the children will be seeing letters and words, as well as hearing them. They will be shown how to make words using magnetic letters, how to read (blend) little words and how to segment words into individual sounds.
These will be simple words made up of two phonemes, for example, am, at, it, or three phonemes, for example, cat, run.
Tricky words
They will also learn several tricky words: the, to, I, go, no. Children will still be practising oral blending and segmenting skills daily. They need plenty of practice at doing this.
Saying the sounds
Your child will be taught how to pronounce the sounds (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. Try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’ etc.
Ways you can support your children at home
- Magnetic letters Buy magnetic letters for your fridge. Find out which letters have been taught – have fun finding these with your child and place them on the magnetic surface.
- Making little words together Make little words together, for example, it, up, am, and, top, dig, run, met, pick. As you select the letters, say them aloud: ‘a-m – am’, ‘m-e-t – met’.
- Make or buy an alphabet poster
- Buy whiteboards and pen These are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting.
- Remember to have fun!
iPad maths
Learning addition with iPads.
Maths in Reception
The children have been making number games.
