This week, we will be celebrating Chinese New Year. 2026 is the year of the horse. We will be learning about the story of Chinese New Year and how people celebrate this festival. We will be making crafts, acting out the story, learning about ordinality of numbers, doing Chinese dancing, learning songs and tasting some Chinese foods. We will be trying noodles, rice, prawn crackers and chilli sauce. Please advise of us any allergies your child has or if your child is unable to try the different foods.
In Maths, we will be learning about capacity and mass. The comparison of quantities is something that children begin to do as babies. When comparing, children notice attributes and begin to understand differences and similarities. The activities this week will focus on further developing this innate skill as the children are encouraged to focus exclusively on the numerosity of sets, without being diverted by colour, shape or size. They will then be encouraged to notice when quantities are equal or unequal, and will begin to consider how they can manipulate the number of objects in 2 sets to make them equal.
Language is a key focus and adults will need to reinforce the language of ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘an equal number’ to describe how many objects there are in each set. ‘Fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’, as the focus is on countable things.
In phonics, the children will be assessed on their phonics progress in readiness for their new groups after half term. We look forward to seeing the progress they have made. Please continue to support your child by listening to them read their reading sheets, books and accessing any phonics homework set online. All the work the children do at home helps to consolidate the learning they have done in school and is essential for their progress.
Please remember we break up for half term on Friday 13th February and return on Monday the 23rd February.
We are missing some Tonies toys from school, an Elsa, Aladdin and Jungle book characters. Please can you check if your child has taken them home accidently.
Thank you for your continued support.
Have a great week.
The Reception Team