PRE RECEPTION
We hope you all had a restful Easter break and had the opportunity to enjoy spending time with your children. We have loved hearing about all the fun times they have had with you. They have settled back well into the routines and boundaries of the setting.
We would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new families to Farringtons; we hope that you and your children will be very happy here.
As you know, this term’s topic is Animals and we will be learning about the historic animals dinosaurs. On returning to school, the children were excited to discover a volcano and some large dinosaurs in the classroom.
LITERACY
In Literacy, we have introduced our key text Gigantosaurus. The children looked at the front cover and described what they noticed. Together, we worked out that the book was about dinosaurs, and it was set in the jungle. The children have painted and described their own dinosaur character. We made dinosaur biscuits and talked about what type of dinosaur each one was.
MATHS
In Maths, we have learnt about sequencing through nursery rhymes, morning and evening routines and other familiar events. We have focused on using our key vocabulary ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘after that’ and ‘finally’ to describe the order in which things happen.
PHONICS
In Phonics, we have learnt the phoneme (sound) ‘v’. This is quite a challenging sound for the children to make and we have used mirrors for the children to check if they have their teeth in the correct place to annunciate the sound. We have taught them the rhyme “put your teeth against your bottom lip and make a buzzing sound vvvvv” to support them. Please look at the Little Wandle video at 14 seconds to help you to pronounce the pure sound with your child
PSHE
This term’s Jigsaw PSHE puzzle is Relationships and this week we have thought about our families and how they are all different and special.
RECEPTION
Welcome back to the start of the Summer Term. This week in Reception we began our new topic, Amazing Animals. The children started the week by sharing their amazing animal fact file posters. They thoroughly enjoyed talking about their knowledge, drawings and models with the class, and we even learned a few new animal facts along the way.
Understanding the World
This week we have been learning about the life cycle of a frog. The children explored each stage of the cycle and learned key facts linked to each stage, building their understanding of how living things grow and change.
Literacy
The children used their knowledge of the frog life cycle to write full sentences about each stage. They were encouraged to begin each sentence with a different connective and add a fact about that stage of the life cycle. The children worked extremely hard and showed great focus and enthusiasm.
Phonics
This week we began Phase 4 in phonics. During this phase, children will learn 18 new tricky words. We will also focus on short vowel words, compound words and longer words
This week’s tricky words were said, so, have, like. The children read longer sentences and wrote dictated sentences such as: “I have lost my belt by the pond.”
Maths
This week we introduced our new topic, To 20 and Beyond. The children explored numbers between 10 and 100, focusing on how many tens and ones make a number. We explored the different ways a number can be made using known number bonds
For example:
13 can be made using 10 + 3
Therefore, It can also be made by:
1 + 9 + 3
2 + 8 + 3
3 + 7 + 3
4 + 6 + 3
5 + 5 + 3
Some children found this challenging, so we will continue to practise this next week in class.
Swimming
The children thoroughly enjoyed their swimming session this week. They practised getting in and out of the pool, blowing bubbles and completed a swim assessment. We look forward to seeing their confidence and skills develop over the term.
