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

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 some beautiful snakes using their fine motor skills to draw and cut out spirals. We are so pleased with the progress they are making with these skills. 

The children worked hard on their personal, social and emotional development (PSED) skills and stood up in front of their classes to explain why these times were special to them.

In Maths, we have explored the number three. Most children can now subitise and count to three accurately and are beginning to visualise three in different contexts. We have also introduced triangles and the children have been taught that a triangle has three straight sides and three corners.

In Phonics, we taught the children to pronounce the ‘g’ phoneme (sound) using the rhyme ‘give me a smile that shows your teeth; press the middle of your tongue to the top and back of your mouth, push your tongue down and forward to make the g sound’. This is a very challenging sound for children to make.  

Reception

Understanding the World  
This week our travels took us to the Arctic and Antarctic. We have been busy learning all about the polar regions, where they are located, the environment, the animals and what it would be like to live there. We learnt facts about the animals and sorted the animals into those that live in the Arctic and those who live in Antarctic. During choosing time we encouraged the children to write facts about Antarctica and the Arctic. 

Phonics  
This week we introduced the phonemes ‘oo,’ oo,’ ‘ar’ and ‘or.’ In class we practised saying the sounds, blending the sounds together to read words, for example ‘c-ar-d.’ We then practised letter formation by writing out the letters cursively. We continued to read and write short captions, for example ‘I can see a car in the dark.’  

This week we introduced the tricky words ‘was,’ ‘you’ and ‘they.’

Maths  
We continued our topics ‘alive in 5’ and ‘mass and capacity.’ We have been encouraging the children to recognise that numbers can also be made up of more than two parts, by exploring composition in of numbers into 3 groups. They then practised writing these as number sentences. Later in the week we explored capacity and balance. 

Expressive arts and design  
Linked to our learning on the polar regions the children have been busy using a range of skills to make penguins using different media. 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. They also used tea cakes, marshmallows, and icing sugar to create edible igloos, to enjoy at home.