What Early Years got up to this week

PRE-RECEPTION

Firstly, it has been another busy week in Pre-Reception. On Wednesday, the new pupils starting in September joined us. Meanwhile, the children moving to Reception were all excited to meet their new teacher and visit the classroom. We have encouraged the children to ask questions and share any concerns they may have. It sounds like they had a fun afternoon.  

With the weather continuing to be hot, we have been thinking about how to keep cool. In addition, we have learned about keeping safe on the beach in the sun. The children are now aware that they should: 

• Slip on a t-shirt

• Slop on some sunscreen

• Slap on a hat

• Seek shade;

• Slide on some sunglasses

• Stay hydrated

We also spoke about water safety on holiday. The children have learnt that they must not go in or near water without one of their adults. 

Maths

In both Maths and Phonics, we have consolidated our prior learning. We will be doing the same next week. 

We are collecting all wordless reading books this week to allow us to perform our book audit.  

Finally, it was a pleasure to see so many parents at our EYFS Tea Party today. We hope you enjoyed the children’s singing and spending some time with them on the field.  

RECEPTION

We have had yet another busy fun-filled week.  It was lovely to see so many parents and the Early Years tea party today, the children sang beautifully. 

Literacy

This week, our Literacy lessons were planned around the children’s first piece of levelled writing using a picture of a feather for inspiration. Levelled writing is independent writing that is used to assess the children’s application of phonics, tricky words and composition of sentences. Over the course of the week, we described how feathers look, feel and move and read books about birds and feathers. The children then used this information to write either a description of the feather or a story that included it.  

Expressive Arts and Design

The children have completed lots of feathery activities this week! They have made observational drawings of feathers, completed feathery mindfulness colouring, and even used feather quills to write and paint.  

Understanding the World

The children enjoyed playing Pétanque in their French lesson this week.  It is a French boules sport where players aim to throw balls (boules) as close as possible to a small target ball (cochonnet).  

Additionally, we were also very excited to see that some of our butterflies had emerged from their chrysalides when we arrived on Monday. We fed them with orange segments and sugar water. After observing them, we released them into our wildflower area. 

Phonics

In Phonics this week, we reviewed the suffixes ‘-ing’ and ‘-ed’. We reminded the children that these two letters make one sound, either the ‘t’ or ‘d’ sound. We continued to read and write longer words by chunking.   

Maths

Finally, this week, we have completed an end of Summer Term assessment.  This covered the topics we have taught over the course of the whole summer term such as doubles, adding more, equal and unequal groups and sharing.  

Find out more about Early Years here.