What Early Years got up to this week

PRE-RECEPTION

The children are beginning to settle back into the routines of school. We look forward to seeing many of you at the FPA Fireworks event this evening. 

Our topic this term is community heroes. This week, we had a visit from Little City. The children enjoyed exploring the different areas set up in the Prep School Hall. These included a vet, doctors, supermarket, hairdressers, and construction site. The children had great fun dressing up, and we later discussed what jobs they would like to do when they grow up.

Phonics

In Phonics, we have been playing with sounds and learning some of our new Little Wandle games. The children are learning to hear the phoneme ‘s’ and how to produce it clearly. We have taught them the rhyme: dhow your teeth and let the s hiss out: ssss ssss. It is crucial that the sounds are modelled correctly.

You can access all the nursery rhymes on the Little Wandle website by clicking the button below: 

Nursery rhymes

Maths

In Maths, we have continued to work with the children on sorting by different rules. For example, we have sorted toys by the rules: cuddly toys and not cuddly toys.

PSHE

Our Jigsaw PSHE puzzle this term is celebrating difference. This week, the children thought about what makes them special and unique. Next week, we will encourage them to think about the things they are good at.  We have also looked at firework safety.  

Next week

Next week, we will continue to learn about the number 1. We will begin to subitise (say how many without counting), use one-to-one correspondence (assigning one number to each object as you count), and work on recognising the numeral (how the number is written). 

We will also learn about remembrance. The children have created a poppy to display in Reception, and we will take part in the service on Tuesday. 

RECEPTION

This week we introduced our new topic: community heroes, where we will be learning about the people who help us within our community.

Literacy

We started the week by sharing the homework set over the half term. The children stood in front of the class and talked about people in the community they had researched and how they help us.

Community heroes launch – visit from Little City

To launch our new topic community heroes, we were excited to welcome Little City into school! Little City is a mobile role-play experience that allows children to explore a miniature world designed just for them. The children thoroughly enjoyed dressing up and taking on different roles as they explored the supermarket, vets, hairdressers, and building site. It was a fantastic hands-on experience that helped them learn more about the important jobs people do in our community.

Maths

In Maths, we continued with the module: it’s me, 1, 2, 3. This week we focused on the composition of number, one more and one less.

We used the concrete–pictorial–abstract approach, which involves using physical and visual aids to build understanding. Using counters, we explored different ways of making 3 and then practised writing these as number sentences.

Phonics

This week we learned the phonemes: ff, ll, ss, and j. We practised: saying the sounds aloud,

blending sounds to read words (e.g., m-e-ss) and writing the letters using cursive formation.

We also introduced the tricky words: put, pull, full, and as. Tricky words are those that cannot be easily decoded (sounded out) and need to be recognised by sight.

Find out more about Early Years here.