PRE-RECEPTION
This term’s topic is ‘animals’ and we will be focusing on farm animals.
LITERACY
In Literacy, we have introduced our key text ‘Farmer Duck’. The children looked at the front cover and described what they noticed. Together, we worked out that the book was about a duck and it was set on a farm. We compared the story to other traditional tales and the children noticed the similarities with Cinderella. They have designed their own farmyards and thought about which animals they would like on their farms. We also explored friendships as a link to our Jigsaw PSHE theme of ‘Relationships’ through drama.
MATHS
In Maths, we have focused on using our key vocabulary ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘after that’ and ‘finally’ to describe the order in which things happen.
PHONICS
In Phonics, we have learnt the phoneme (sound) ‘v’. This is quite a challenging sound for the children to make and we have used mirrors for the children to check if they have their teeth in the correct place to annunciate the sound. We have taught them the rhyme “put your teeth against your bottom lip and make a buzzing sound vvvvv” to support them. You can look at the Little Wandle video at 14 seconds to help you to pronounce the pure sound with your child).
PHSE
This term’s Jigsaw PSHE ‘puzzle’ is ‘relationships’ and this week we have thought about our families and how they are all different and special.
RECEPTION
This week we started a new top ‘amazing animals.’ We started the week by sharing their amazing animal fact file posters. The children really enjoyed sharing their knowledge, drawings and models with the rest of the class. We even learnt a few new facts!
Understanding the World
We have been focusing on the life cycle of frogs this week. We learnt about each stage of the cycle as well as facts linked to that stage. The children then had the opportunity to look at some real tadpoles. They will remain in the class for the next few weeks so we can observe any changes.
Literacy
The children applied their fact knowledge to write full sentences about each stage of the frog life cycle. We encouraged to start each stage with a different connective. We then challenged them to add a fact about that stage.
Phonics
This week we started Phase 4 in phonics. During this phase we will be learning 18 new tricky words and focusing on short vowel words, compound words and longer words.
This week we learnt the tricky words ‘said, so, have, like.’ We read longer sentences and the children wrote dictated sentences, such as ‘I have lost my belt by the pond.’ If they completed their sentences correctly, we challenged them to use one of the spellings from that session in a full sentence.
Maths
This week we started a new topic ‘to 20 and beyond.’ We have been exploring numbers between 10- 100. We have looked at how many ‘tens’ and how many ‘ones’ are in the number. We have then used our previously taught knowledge to think about how these numbers could be made.
For example: 13 can be made by 10 + 3. Then using our number bond to 10 knowledge we will know that 13 can also be made…
1 + 9+ 3 = 13
2 + 8+ 3 = 13
3 + 7+ 3 = 13
4 + 6 + 3 = 13
5 + 5 + 3 = 13
Swimming
The children thoroughly enjoyed their swimming session this week. They practised getting in and out of the pool, blowing bubbles and completed a swim assessment. We are looking forward to seeing them develop their swimming skills over the term.
Find out more about Early Years here.
