Reception

Summer Term

We have been taking full advantage of the sunshine and warmer temperatures by spending more time outdoors this week. It has been wonderful to see the children engage more with nature, explore the outdoor environment and participate in various outdoor projects!

On this note, with the weather warming up and as the sun shines brighter we kindly ask that your child be provided with a sun hat, a water bottle and have sun cream on. This should be applied before school as we are not able to apply your child’s sun cream for them.

Outside Day

Outside day consisted of role play, PE, forest bathing and observing the seasonal changes in our forest as well as making crowns using natural resources for King Gobbledygook (the king goblin from the Jack Frost story).

After discussions with the children about our outdoor day this week, many of them seemed keen to explore the Fairytale Portal further. The children returned to their infamous portal characters as they entered the portal through a hula-hoop! When they entered the fairytale land, the children spent some time exploring their surroundings. They could all describe so well what they could see, hear, smell and feel. The imagination and use of vocabulary was fantastic. Role-play is a crucial part of children’s development. Some of the key benefits being: enhancing social skills, language development, problem-solving skills, emotional regulation and confidence building.

The children participated in some forest bathing too this week. Forest bathing is an activity with no activities! It is not exercise, walking, or investigating. It is simply spending time in and with nature, letting it invade our being using all of our senses. During the activity, the children saw some of the changes that have been occurring lately within our forest area. They were particularly fans of the bluebells and butterflies!

We engaged in some PE this week. The children practiced the fundamental skill of jumping, as they had to cross the river from the Billy Goats Gruff. They also had to solve a number of problems and explore different ways to cross the river. We also did some tag rugby activities. The children were split into two teams: Team Goblins and Team Fairytale. The aim of the activity was to get the ball across the space and place it into the hoop, without the goblins grabbing their tag. The children developed the key skills of spacial awareness, agility and ball skills.

ILT

To further encourage the children to explore and engage with different areas of the classroom more extensively, we have taken away the DT area this week! Although we love this area and the children continue to succeed in a number of projects here, we have found in recent weeks, it has become a very popular and safe area for the children to work in. By removing this area for the week, the children have been keen to explore new areas of the classroom and think of new strategies to develop their plans. We have also continued to focus on collaboration this week and the children have been encouraged to work with other children who they would not tend to work with usually. New relationships have developed through this approach, which has been lovely to see.

Maths

This week we have revisited number bonds up to 5 and explored the various combinations to make the same totals. We have also introduced the children to the number 14, closely looking at its place value and position on a number line. The children have been representing the number in a variety of ways. One of our favourite ways to represent a number is to do an action or a movement that amount of times. Can your child do 14 star jumps for you at home? Can they do 14 spins? Be careful!

Phonics

We have taught all of the phase 2 and 3 sounds now, therefore we will be spending some time in the upcoming weeks consolidating children’s knowledge of all the sounds we have taught so far. As well as learning to read the sounds, the children have also been busy applying them to some of their writing. They are encouraged to use their fingers to segment (sound out) the word before writing this down.

We have also learnt the phase 4 tricky words: out and like. These are words that cannot be sounded out and they must be recognised by sight. As always, the phonics play online resource is available for your child to use to reinforce their learning at home.  There are also many engaging activities shared both online and in previous newsletters if you wanted to have a more active approach to learning these words with your child.

Writing

Our community session last week led us nicely into some inspirational writing this week. We have been writing newspaper reports about the events from last Thursday (saving Jack Frost from the Goblins). The children have been so enthusiastic about their reports, which has led them into some independent writing about the events during ILT. Can your child write a sentence for you at home telling you what they saw when they entered the portal?

Guinea Pigs

We still have availability for the guinea pigs. Please let one of the team know if you would like some additional company over an upcoming weekend!