PRE-RECEPTION
Pre-Reception has been full of fun and laughter this week as we explored happiness’ We have listened to both African music and the children’s favourite songs, clapping and dancing to the beat. During child initiated play, the children have explored our musical instruments, including African percussion instruments; some have made their own and are looking forward to bringing them home to entertain you. The children also made a train using chairs, bricks and their imagination. They drove the train to Africa and went on a safari. They named lots of animals they saw on the way.
The children enjoyed listening to the story Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett. They have thought about packing for a journey, like the characters in the story did, and written postcards from Africa. They have learnt facts about meerkats and included these ideas in their imaginative play.
PSED
The children worked hard on their Personal Social and Emotional Development (PSED) skills and stood up in front of their classes to show photographs of them and explain why these times were special.
MATHS
In Maths, we have explored number four. Most children can now subitise and count to four accurately and are beginning to visualise four in different contexts. We have also looked at 4-sided shapes and talked about the different lengths of the sides.
PHONICS
In Phonics, we have taught the children to pronounce the ‘o’ (as in mop) phoneme (sound) using the rhyme ‘make your mouth into round shape and say, ‘o o o’. Please feel free to watch the Little Wandle ‘Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1’ video (at 25 seconds) to listen to the pure sound being demonstrated.
For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)
Next week, we will learn to pronounce ‘c’. We will also continue 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
We have certainly enjoyed some warmer climates in Reception this week as the children travelled (in spirit!) to Africa. They have loved exploring this exciting part of the world and have shown great enthusiasm throughout their learning.
Understanding the World
The children have been busy discovering lots of interesting facts about Africa. We found it on a map and a globe, looked closely at the different habitats found there, and researched some of the amazing animals that live on the continent.
Literacy
This week, we immersed ourselves in the story Handa’s Surprise. We explored where the story is set, the animals Handa meets on her journey, and the wonderful fruit grown in Africa. As a class, we created our own story map and used it to practise retelling the story. The children then wrote their own sentences about the book in their literacy books.
Phonics
In Phase 3 phonics, we introduced the phonemes ‘ur’, ‘ow’, ‘oi’ and ‘ear’. We practised saying the sounds, blending them to read words such as b-oi-l, and reading and writing short captions like “I can hear the owl in the night.”
This week’s new tricky words were my, by and all.
Maths
This week, we explored the numbers 6, 7 and 8, thinking about different ways to make these numbers using what we already know. We continued writing number sentences to find totals and focused on the quick recall of number bonds to 5.
Expressive Arts and Design
Our African theme continued in creative style! The children made beautiful African prints and observational animal drawings. In Music, we learnt a call-and-response song from Ghana and explored traditional African instruments. We also enjoyed using Djembe drums to practise echo rhythms, this was lots of fun and energy!
Find out more about Early Years here.
