What Early Years got up to in the Prep School this week

Pre-Reception

This week, we have been learning about the Schools Groundsmen as part of our community heroes topic. We were lucky enough to be able to take the children to meet them by their potting shed and, as well as meeting Steve and Sebastian, the children met Oscar the orange tractor!

We have also been on learning walks around the beautiful grounds, including a ‘spot the numeral 2’ walk.  The children have learnt about the abstract artist Piet Mondrian and have enjoyed creating their own responses to his paintings. They learnt that paintings do not have to be of recognisable objects and that abstract artists use shape, colour and texture in their creations.  

In Maths, we have continued to learn about the number 2. We have focused on 1:1 correspondence when counting 2 objects (assigning a number to each item counted in order), learnt to recognise and write the numeral 2 and matched 2 objects to the numeral 2. We have taught the phrase, ‘start at the top, round and down and across the base’ to help the children to form their numeral 2 correctly. 

In Phonics, we have taught the children to recognise the ‘p’ phoneme (sound) and to pronounce this correctly. We have used the phrase ‘bring your lips together and push them open and say p p p’. 

Reception 

Literacy   

Following on with our theme ‘Community Heroes’ we explored the role of a firefighter. At the beginning of the week, we learnt all about a firefighter’s job. The children were surprised to learn that this involved more than putting out fires. On Wednesday Rob, a firefighter visited us and talked about his job. He brought in lots of equipment and explained how it is used. The children asked lots of questions to deepen their understanding. We have noticed a big improvement in their listening and questioning skills over the weeks.  

Maths   

This week we continued to explore numbers. We focused on the numbers 4 and 5. We looked at subitising and explaining what we could see.  We practised number formation and different ways of representing 4 and 5 using pictorial representations and physical objects. Finally, we looked at how we can use a 5 frame to show their findings.  

Phonics   

This week we introduced the first digraphs. A digraph is a grapheme using two letters to represent one phoneme. With children, we frequently reinforce it with the mantra ‘two letters, one sound’.

This week we learnt the phonemes z, qu, and ch. In class we practised saying the sounds, blending the sounds together to read words, for example r-i-ch. We then practised letter formation by writing out the letters cursively. We also learnt the tricky words go, no, to and into. We continued to read short and write short captions, for example run in the sun.