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

Pre-Reception

We have had another very busy week in Pre-Reception.  

In our literacy lessons, we have introduced our new story ‘Errol’s Garden’. The children enjoyed listening to and engaging in this book and have made links to our own school EYFS garden and their planting.  The runner beans that the children planted in our curiosity cube have begun to grow and they have enjoyed watching their quick growth. In our book, Errol and his father drew a plan for their garden; the children have drawn some wonderful plans for their own dream roof gardens in the writing area.  

We had great fun on Thursday celebrating World Book Day. The children all looked fantastic in their outfits. The Pre-Reception team all dressed up as characters from ‘Supertato’ and the children arrived to a crime scene. The Evil Pea had trapped the vegetables in baskets and tied them to the table with plasters and tape. The children were detectives and enjoyed fingerprinting each other and looking for clues. On our writing area we had a provocation to encourage the children to design their own wanted posters. They also designed their own fruit and vegetable superhero characters.

In phonics, we have learnt how to pronounce the sound ‘b’. We have taught the children the rhyme ‘Put your lips together and say b as you open them b b b.’

In Maths, we have introduced length and height. We have taught the children the key vocabulary ‘short’, ‘shorter’, ‘tall’, ‘taller’, ‘long’ and ‘longer’. For extra challenge, we have also taught them ‘shortest’, ‘longest’ and tallest.  

In our Jigsaw PSHE lesson we thought about food that is healthy and food that is not so healthy.

Reception 

Understanding the World   
Continuing with our topic ‘growth,’ this week we have been learning about human growth. We enjoyed looking at and listening to the story ‘Once there were Giants’ by ‘Martin Waddell’. The book explored the different stages humans grow through, baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult and elderly. We all enjoyed looking at the baby photos and guessing who was who.

Literacy
Linked to our learning about human growth we discussed and compared what everyone could do as a baby compared to what they can now do as children. They thought of their own sentences and then recorded them in their literacy books.

Phonics   
This week we reviewed Phase 3 phonemes. We focused on reading and writing words with two or more digraphs. We also revisited a selection of tricky words in phase 2 and 3. We practised reading and writing dictated sentence containing these sounds, for example ‘The queen has seven sheep and a shark.’

Maths   
This week continued our learning in the block ‘building 9 and 10’. We explored number composition, doubling, odd and even. On World Book Day we received a challenge from the Giant. He challenged all of the children to draw around their shoes and measure them using cubes. They then needed to find out whose shoe was the longest and whose shoe was the shortest.  

World Book Day
On Thursday our classroom was transformed into a scene from ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children were set a range of challenges based on our chosen book. For maths they sorted odd and even numbered magic beans. For literacy they were challenged to re-tell the story or write in speech bubbles what they thought the characters may be saying. For our creative challenge, as a class we had to decorate our classroom door in the theme of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ The children used many different skills to create their masterpiece. Including folding, cutting, scrunching, collaging, and joining.