What Early Years got up to this week

PRE-RECEPTION

The children have worked incredibly hard this week in Pre-Reception. They have fully immersed themselves back into their learning.  

We have enjoyed exploring various aspects of Africa. The children have learnt that Africa is a continent made up of over 50 countries and that it has a mixed climate. We have thought about appropriate clothes to wear when visiting both hot and cold countries. Thank you to Mrs Thompson for the family pictures in Lapland and Egypt. It clearly showed the variety of clothing required.  

MATHS

In Maths, we have been subitising the number 1, 2 and 3 using various formats. The children are becoming much more confident in being able to visualise an amount up to three.  

Next week we will begin to look at the number 4, this will include counting 4 and recognition of the numeral 4.  

PHONICS

In Phonics, we will learn how to pronounce the sound ‘o’.  We will also start to encourage the children to listen carefully to the start of words and see if they can identify the initial sound – even if it is not the focus sound of the week.  

RECEPTION

It has been a chilly week of learning both inside and outside the classroom this week, as we continued our new topic ticket around the world and visited the polar regions.

Understanding the World

This week our travels took us to the Arctic and Antarctic. We have been busy learning lots of facts about the polar regions. Where they are located, the environment, the animals and what it would be like to live there. We researched animals and sorted them by whether they live in the Arctic or Antarctic.

Phonics

Our learning continued within phase 3, where we introduced the phonemes ‘oo,’ ‘ar,’ and ‘or.’ During class, the children practised saying the sounds, blending the sounds together to read words, for example ‘c-ar-d.’ Following this, we worked on letter formation by writing the letters cursively. Finally, we progressed to reading and writing short captions, for example: ‘I can see a car in the dark.’

This week we introduced the tricky words ‘was,’ ‘you’ and ‘they.’ As we have moved onto phase 3, we have provided you with a new tricky word mat. This is the mat the children use in class. We have explained to the children that we have learnt all phase 2 tricky words in the first block. We are now learning tricky words in the middle group and we have not yet learnt the tricky words in the last block.

Maths

Recently, we completed our topic alive in 5 and moved onto mass and capacity. Throughout these sessions, we have been encouraging the children to recognise that numbers can also be made up of more than two parts, by exploring compositions in numbers into 3 groups. Building on this, we practised writing these as number sentences. To conclude the week, we explored capacity and used balance scales to compare weights.

Expressive arts and design

The children used a range of skills and media to create Arctic animals linked to our polar theme. The children’s concentration and resilience skills were put to the test this week when in pairs they used their fine motor skills to create igloos out of sugar cubes.

Find out more about Early Years here.