What Early Years got up to this week

PRE-RECEPTION

What a busy first week back we have had! We had a busy Open Morning on Wednesday, an exciting visit from some unusual animals on Thursday, and danced through the decades on Friday with Don-Rae.

The children have enjoyed learning about our new topic ‘flowers and growing.’ We have read ‘Six Dinner Sid,’ to help us with our focus on number 6 and the children have completed activities relating to this story.

Phonics

In Phonics, we have taught the children to pronounce the sound ‘r’ phoneme (sound) using the rhyme ‘Show me your teeth to make a rrrr sound rrrrr.’

Maths

In Maths, we have continued to work on the cardinal principle (understanding that the final number they say when counting in order is the whole amount) and composition of number. We have encouraged the children to use sentences to discuss the amounts. Our focus this week was the number 6.

PSHE

In our Jigsaw PSHE lesson we discussed and named the various parts of our bodies using the song ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes.’

RECEPTION

Understanding the World    

The new term means an exciting new topic. This term we are exploring ‘growth’. We started by exploring growth in plants and we have been focussing on planting seeds. 

Literacy 

In Literacy we have been exploring writing instructions. First, we learnt how to plant a seed. We thought about the process and broke it down into stages. We then used ‘bossy’ language to write instructions.  

Phonics    

This week we reviewed phase 3 phonemes: ai ee igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, oo, ow, oi and ear. We also revisited a selection of tricky words in phase 2 and 3. We practised reading and writing dictated sentence containing these sounds, for example ‘We put the rabbit down on the carpet’. 

Maths    

This week we started the block ‘building 9 and 10’. We focused on comparing 9 and 10, representing 9 and 10 using different objects and images, and conceptual subitising. Children use conceptual subitising to identify a whole quantity within 10 by subitising the smaller groups that make up that number. This skill will support children to develop mental images for addition and subtraction, which helps children to move away from counting on and counting back. 

Expressive arts and design    

Our classroom looks bright and beautiful as the children have been busy using a range of skills including cutting, folding, and joining to make flowers. The children have been completing observational paintings of spring plants. First, they drew the flowers using pencil. We encouraged the children to look very closely at the flowers and to only draw what they could see. Once completed they used water paints to add colour to their pictures. They thought carefully about the shading and different colours they could see. 

Find out more about Early Years here.