Week 5 has been another very busy and exciting week in Reception. We have continued learning about the Elli animals by thinking about the Chameleon who helps us to be flexible and adapt our plans, sometimes when they are not working and sometimes to make them even better! We have also begun our phonics learning and have learnt the letter names, phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (written letter) for s a t. We have also ‘blended’ the phonemes together to make the words as, at, sat. Please help your children to recognise and hear these sounds by playing games like I spy and looking for them in the environment.

Autumn has definitely arrived and it has been a lot colder this week even when it is not raining! We spend a lot of time outside so please remember that your child needs a warm waterproof coat every day. It is also much colder in school as due to COVID we are keeping the windows and doors open to ensure the classrooms are well ventilated. Please make sure your child is dressed warmly with a sweatshirt or fleece and long trousers or tights. On PE days joggers or leggings should be worn.

INSET day

Remember there is no school on Monday this week as we have a staff training day where we will be learning about phonics teaching and reading.

Welly walk

Weather permitting we are planning to take the children on a walk around the school grounds over the next 2 weeks to look for signs of Autumn. Please could you send a pair of named wellies in a named carrier bag that can be stored on their peg  until we use them.

Curriculum Information Q&A 

Our zoom meeting for Q&A related to the Curriculum information power point is this Thursday at 6.30 pm. This is your opportunity to ask questions and find out more about your child’s day in school and our curriculum. You can submit questions beforehand or use the chat on the zoom meeting.

This week’s Learning.

The full plans are available here for children who are quarantining at home.

PSHE

Elli animals – we will continue thinking about how the chameleon helps us to adapt our plans. We will be thinking about having being kind to each other and having ‘Kind hands’ when we are playing. 

Communication & Language

This week we will be focusing on rhythm and rhyme. We will be reading rhyming stories and predicting the rhyming words, Playing with rhyming words by listening to rhymes and making up our own, clapping and copying rhythms and syllables in words.

The children will be sharing some of their All About Me photographs with the class.. (c/c C&L / UW)

Physical

We are focusing on developing the children’s fine motor and pencil skills by developing the muscles in their hands and fingers through finger rhymes,  Write Dance and the provision of activities such as lego, meccano, threading, playdough and tracing patterns in the classroom. 

We will practising the letter formation of the phonemes that we are learning.

In our PE lessons we will be practising moving and balancing in a variety of different ways.

Literacy

This week we will be recapping the phonemes s a t and learning the phonemes p i  n . We will use these phonemes to blend words such as:  

at, a, sat, pat, tap, sap, as, it, is, sit, pit, tip, pip, sip, an, in, nip, pan, pin, tin, tan, nap

We will be encouraging each child to draw pictures of their families and use their mark making and writing skills to label them.

Here is a link that highlights the pronunciation of the English phonic code, this is a good prompt to help support your children at home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwJx1NSineE&feature=emb_title

Mathematics

This week we will be focusing on sorting and matching  in lots of different ways such as colour, size and shape. We will be thinking about what makes a set of objects the same or different and encouraging the children to come up with their own criteria and to find the odd one out.

Understanding the World 

RE: Ongoing from last week – Thank you to everyone that has already sent us ‘All about Me’  photos. If you have notdone this yet here are the instructions again:

As we are limiting objects going back and forth due to Covid 19 safety, this year we are asking if you could please send us 4 pictures attached to an email to your class email address. Here are some suggestions of things you could include:

– baby photo

– photo of a pet 

– photo of a favourite toy

– a photo of special clothes maybe for a celebration or festival, or just dressing up

– holiday photo

– photo of someone special to you

We can then share the pictures on the screen in class. We will gradually work through these, so it may be a week or two before your child has their turn! 

The World: 

This week we will continue our learning about Chameleons.

We will also be learning about the change in the season and hopefully going for a ‘welly walk’ around the grounds to look for and collect signs of Autumn.

Expressive Arts:

Collecting Autumn leaves and using them for leaf printing.

Music: Using our bodies and percussion instruments to learn about rhythms and rhymes. (c/c C&L)

Dance: In our Writedance lesson we will move to the music and match the gross motor movements to mark making skills.