PRE-RECEPTION
This Week
The children have continued to settle well into their new routines and are beginning to understand the rules and boundaries of our setting. They enjoyed taking part in their specialist lessons and had a wonderful time at Forest School. We made the most of the glorious autumn sunshine. We revisited the Forest School rules, including: ‘No pick, no lick’, ‘do not cross the boundaries’ and ‘never walk through the basecamp’. They also enjoyed playing ‘1, 2, 3, come to me!’.
Literacy
We have had great fun learning and acting out the story of The Gingerbread Man. As the week went on, the children’s confidence in joining in with repeated refrains and acting out the characters really developed. To support the children’s motor skills this week, we mixed, snipped, squashed and rolled gingerbread playdough and baked gingerbread biscuits.
Our poem this week was The Wise Old Owl.
Maths
In Maths, we have been matching and sorting colours, shapes and sizes. You could ask your children to help you sort the socks at home when putting the washing away. What is the same? What is different?
Phonics
In Phonics, we are working on children’s phonological awareness. This is how children ‘tune into sounds’. Phonological awareness is a precursor to writing. If children can hear the different phonemes (or sounds) in words at this stage, they will be able to write short words when they learn the graphemes (how the sounds are written).
reception
We have had another busy and exciting week in Reception! The children have continued to settle in brilliantly, and we have now begun our daily Maths, Literacy and Phonics sessions. It has been wonderful to see their confidence growing as they become increasingly familiar with our routines and learning environment.
Literacy
As part of our topic, Ourselves, the children were invited to bring in their favourite toy to share with the class. We encouraged them to stand in front of their friends and talk about why their toy is special to them, helping to develop their speaking and listening skills.
The adults modelled how to ask appropriate questions and how to listen carefully to each other’s answers. It was wonderful to see so many children confidently sharing their toys and stories with their friends.
Maths
This week, we began our new Maths module, Match, Sort and Compare. We started by exploring how we can match different objects and encouraged the children to explain why particular items matched.
We then moved on to identifying similarities and differences and explored the different ways in which objects can be sorted into groups according to their features and properties.
Phonics
We began our first Phonics sessions this week and have introduced the phonemes s, a, t and p. In your child’s bag, you will find a large plastic wallet. Each week, we will send home the phonemes we have learnt, along with a Phonics sheet in your child’s homework book. This will include the sounds and words we have practised in class. We have also begun learning how to write these sounds.
Expressive Arts and Design
As part of our Ourselves topic, the children became artists and created their own self-portraits. We encouraged them to look carefully at their individual features and think about what makes them unique before independently drawing how they see themselves.
We will revisit this activity at different points throughout their time in Reception, giving the children a lovely opportunity to see how their observation and drawing skills develop over the year.
Our top ten books
As part of our Creative Literacy Explorer programme, we use a selection of carefully chosen texts to foster a lifelong love of books, stories and reading. Our Reception top ten books are:
- Rosie’s Walk – Pat Hutchins
- Peace at Last – Jill Murphy
- Owl Babies – Martin Waddell
- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – Michael Rosen & Helen Oxenbury
- Mr Gumpy’s Outing – John Burningham
- Handa’s Surprise – Eileen Browne
- The Gruffalo – Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler
- Look Up! – Nathan Bryon
- On the Way Home – Jill Murphy
- Conker the Chameleon
These stories will be read and revisited regularly in class, helping the children to become increasingly familiar with language patterns, vocabulary, characters and story structures. Repeated reading also encourages the children to join in with familiar phrases and develop their confidence as storytellers and readers.
Find out more about Early Years
