This week we have focussed on moving and growing in our wider curriculum work. We learnt about how the skeleton grows with us and supports our bodies and helps us to move. The children looked at x-rays of the human skeleton and we enjoyed watching the Funny Bones as well as singing ‘dem bones. Using great fine motor-skills as well as a lot of patience and perseverance, some children cut out and connected the bones of a skeleton using split pins so that the limbs could move.
We also thought about animals and their young and played games where we matched baby animals to their mother. The children drew, coloured and cut out and matched animals, while outside in the orchard, we used clay and natural objects to make a variety of minibeasts and other animals. As usual, the children enjoyed using various construction to imagine and create and used modelling dough to create a revolting breakfast inspired by our drawing club visual text this week – Trapdoor – I’m sure you remember this old animation. They are enjoying drawing club more and more and the detail in their drawings and the ideas they have are amazing. Some children are really challenging themselves and writing sentences about their pictures with and sometimes without adult support. We are continuing to think about special places in our Religious Education focus and this week we began learning about different places of worship including, churches, mosques, synagogues and gurdwaras. The children enjoyed using musical instruments this week in music using call and response type activities as well as copying rhythms. We had our weekly dedicated weekly PE session with Mrs Jordan this week and the children showed imagination and control in their movement skills. Thankfully, we did get an opportunity to use the outdoor area where plenty of physical exercise takes place including rolling, climbing, swinging and lots of running around. Maths Our focus this week was consolidating the understanding of the composition of 5. This was practised through the rhyme 5 kittens jumping on the bed; the children were able to identify how many kittens were on the bed and how many were not, therefore learning number bonds to five using sentences such as 5 is made of 3 and 2, 3 and 2 make 5. Later in the week we went on to think about the composition of 6, 7, 8 and 9 as ‘5 and a bit’. In maths, we use rhymes, visuals (including Numberblocks clips) as well as games and opportunities for the children to hone their maths skills in the continuous provision. Reading and phonics The children are making great progress in our daily phonics lessons and it is a pleasure to hear children reading fluently and to see them trying so hard with their writing. We also enjoy daily stories, chosen by the teachers or sometimes brought in by a child. This week we read The invisible string brought in by one of the children from home. I thought this was a beautiful book and one I would recommend others to read with their children especially if they find separation difficult.
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Welcome back to our final term in Reception - can you believe it?! We have had a great first week back and the children have returned with renewed vigour and enthusiasm for playing and learning in our lovely environment. We have already begun to enjoy the outdoor environment a little more and hopefully the weather will continue to improve to allow more of this. This half term we are learning through the topic of 'growing'. This includes learning about plants and flowers; animals and lifecycles; keeping fit and healthy to grow well and we are planning a school trip as part of this theme to learn about bees and minibeasts. Phonics The children are making very good progress with their reading and writing and we see them applying their learning much more across the day. The expectations have increased and the children now spend up to 45 minutes in a formal phonics lesson. They are coping with this well and this is a good way to get them ready for year 1 which really isn't far off now. Your continued support at home is appreciated with the greatest benefit coming from reading with your child listening to them and reading stories to them. Drawing Club All children now take part in drawing club every day. The focus text this week has been farmer duck which the children enjoyed joining in with "How goes the work" and "Quack". I love talking to them as they draw and describe their imaginative ideas! Their 'adventure codes' are becoming more adventurous now as they apply the words and sounds they have learned. Maths This week in maths we have been learning one to one correspondence when counting to 10, understanding the importance of counting carefully without counting the same object twice or repeating or missing numbers. As well as this, we did some measure learning in the context of mass(weight). Learning through our Topic. We have had fun with our learning this week including painting, modelling, cutting and sticking and drawing flowers and plants. We have planted seeds (conkers) to see if they will grow and dug up weeds to observe the parts of a plant. We have also been outside to observe minibeasts and see what else we can see growing in the outdoor area. RE, Music and PE In RE we began thinking about special places by sharing our favourite places as well as the places where we feel safe. One of the children's favourite places was the park and this provided a link to our PE lesson where we pretended to be at the park for our warm up before learning to jump in different forms/shapes. Our music this half term is all about exploring sounds and this week we began by exploring the different sounds our voices can make. This week our learning was based around our Drawing club story, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We built bridges and climbed over bridges. We designed and built various ways to cross rivers and experimented in the water tray with sinking and floating materials and built rafts out of natural and man-made materials. We painted rivers and fields by mixing and exploring the use of different blues and greens. We drew, coloured and wrote about the characters in the story and also made troll faces using natural materials in our Tuff Tray. In music, we used drums to explore different sounds to represent the trip-trapping of each of the goats, using small drums for the smallest goat and large drums for the largest. The children listened well, played at the right time and were able to copy a pattern on their drums. As we were thinking about rivers and bridges, it seemed a good idea to link to our local area. The children were able to identify pictures of local buildings and areas around North Tawton, including bridges and rivers that they might have walked by. We learnt a little more about our ‘House Teams’ and that they were all named after local rivers. I also introduced the children to the poetry of Ted Hughes and explained how this very famous poet lived in our community. I read some of Ted Hughes’ poems for children about animals that live in our local environment. The children continue to make great progress in their phonics. I was very impressed with their writing this week and we are encouraging them to read and write during their independent learning using ‘Fred Talk’ and ‘Fred Fingers’. After Easter, with one term left in Reception, we will be gradually increasing the length of the phonics sessions to prepare them for the expectations of year 1. In maths this week, the children recognised, made and represented doubles up to double 5. They really enjoyed the practical activities involved and were able to work collaboratively with a partner. The children were also introduced to the concept of odd and even numbers through visual representation which they were then able to create from multilink: It has been lovely to get outside more this week. The children love the outdoor area and are so creative with the varied learning they can experience in our fantastic environment. Hopefully, spring is now here and we will be able to do much more learning outdoors in the coming weeks. Castles, Knights and Dragons. This week we have continued to explore traditional tales and fairy stories, this time through the theme of castles, knights and dragons. The children made castles using a variety of materials and mediums, including, junk modelling, construction, cutting and sticking 2-d shapes as well as colouring and drawing castles. They have developed their fine motor skills to make moveable knights by carefully cutting out and then attaching arms and legs to the knight’s body using split pins to make the limbs moveable. They also designed their own coat of arms using a ruler to divide the shape into two or four parts and then drawing and colouring to represent themselves. Some children made colourful dragon faces by printing with the unusual material of bubble wrap to create scale-like patterns on fire-breathing dragon faces. Others, cut out and wore their own dragon masks which they used to try and scare their teachers!
The children have continued to develop their phonic skills in daily phonic sessions and have applied their skills to their independent learning where they have been reading and writing captions as well as reading books available in the classroom with increasing independence. They delight in spotting and using the new sounds that they learn each day and enjoy writing words and phrases in their play. Over the next 2 weeks, I will be assessing the children as we do at the end of each half term to check on the progress they are making. This is also true in drawing club. This week, the story was Billy and the Beast – a modern story reminiscent of George and the Dragon but in this story the hero is a little girl who outsmarts the rather stupid beast! The children love coming to drawing club to use their imagination to make the story their own using drawings and ‘adventure codes’ to make the magic happen! In maths this week, the children explored the composition of numbers within 10, focusing on the ‘special case’ of when 2 equal parts combine to make a whole. The children used their skills of comparison to identify when 2 sets are equal or NOT equal. They saw a range of familiar representations including dice and fingers to explore the idea of ‘2 equal parts’, and then found the whole by combining these parts. The children continued to use their subitising skills, and are beginning to ‘know’ the whole when they see 2 parts the same size for larger numbers within 10, as well as beginning to recall some doubles facts. I was really impressed with how they worked collaboratively in pairs to make their own doubles which they then represented on whiteboards as you will see in the photographs. We also enjoyed further enrichment of our curriculum through French and music this week. Marion came and delighted the children with her story of ‘la chenille qui fais des trous’ (the very hungry caterpillar). Using beautifully illustrated story stones, Marion told the story in French and English to her captive audience! The children love these lessons and they love Marion coming in. We are so grateful to her for giving up her time to teach the children a modern foreign language. In our music lesson this week, the children worked together in small groups to compose music using percussion instruments. They are learning not only musical skills and knowledge such as pitch (high or low), tempo (fast or slow) and dynamic (loud or quiet) but also the social skills of sharing, collaborating and negotiating. This week, within our theme of traditional tales and fairy stories we have played and learnt through our theme of heroes/heroines/princes and princesses.
The children are making good progress in their phonics lessons and are becoming real readers who are able to apply their skills to other books and the environment. In maths, we have been learning about the composition of the number 7 through games, activities and songs. The children learnt that 7 is made up of 5 and 2 as well as 4 and 3 and 6 and 1 and so on. In Drawing Club this week we watched an old cartoon featuring the alternative superhero Bananaman. As well as drawing him and his nemesis Dr Gloom and his ray gun, we used new vocabulary to go with the story. Superheroes also featured in our continuous provision as we designed our own superhero symbols, made super hero vehicles from junk modelling and decorated super hero capes. Our PE lessons have been focussed on ball skills and gymnastics. Mr Pearson taught the children how to control a ball and on Monday in gymnastics, they were learning how to use control to make different body shapes such as tuck and star shapes. On Wednesday this week we were able to get outside in to the sunshine. In R.E. we have been learning about the Easter story and this week after remembering the four seasons we thought about how spring links to the Easter story. We went outside and collected natural objects to make our own Easter gardens. Thursday was of course World Book Day. So great to see all the children dressed up as their favourite book character - especially nice when they bring their favourite book with them too to share. Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers or special others out there for Sunday. I hope the children have some lovey surprises for you and you are able to enjoy a special day with your family. |
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May 2024
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